


A Swift Lesson in Irony

by orphan_account



Series: Home Is so Far Away [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 104th Training Squad Arc, Colossal Titan Spoilers, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Kind of angsty, Shy Love, Titan Shifter Instincts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:35:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1293280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After an awkward introduction, Mikasa and Bertholdt become passive friends. When he catches a nasty cold, she's there to help him out.<br/>Perhaps he's a lot more human than he takes credit for.</p><p>Most likely going to be a long collection of one-shots for the strangest couple imaginable.</p><p>Chapters 1-4: Canon Universe Alteration<br/>Chapters 5-8: Collared Titan, universe alteration from the previous arc<br/>Chapters 9-?: Reincarnation Alternate Universe</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Odd Form of Care

When he fell in love, it was an utter accident.

Staring at the list with all their names in order by rank, Bertholdt had ducked his head in a small smile when he saw himself at #3. Honestly, he hadn’t thought he would place so high, and had worried his way through most of the training. Briefly, he wondered if some of it was natural instinct. Though he knew, if push came to shove, he might not be able to actually kill a titan. To look them in the eyes, to strike their weak spot-

The thought made him a little sick, so he quickly derailed, rubbing lightly at the back of his own neck. At the top of the list, the most skilled titan killer, printed “Mikasa Ackerman”, sent a chill down his spine. She topped even Reiner, who he knew had spent nights in personal training to get to the top. Personally, he’d never paid too much attention to her, but to land such a high spot in the ranks proved only that she must be merciless and cruel.

When someone bumps into him, he lets out an “oh, sorry, uh”, to no response. He’s kinda used to it, and, to be honest, he wasn’t paying too much attention to his surroundings. The person freezes for a heartbeat (he can feel a sharp hipbone press into his thigh) and they turn. No longer attempting to act oblivious, he tilts his head down to make eye contact.

Unexpectedly, he doesn’t have to look down as far down as he expected, as most people come up to his waist at best. The girl below him stands up to his chest, hair obscuring the majority of her face. She pushes her bangs out of her eyes, blinking uncomfortably, and he wonders if her fringe is the reason that she knocked into him.

He meets pale gray eyes that blink up at him, taking him in. He shifts from foot to foot, uncomfortable, as she doesn’t seem to be moving anytime soon. She doesn’t look away, just backs up a step, extending her hand outward to him.

It takes him a long moment to process that she’s going to shake his hand, and he hesitantly folds his fingers around the back of her pale hands. “I’m Mikasa Ackerman- I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself to you before.” In the back of his mind, he quickly associates her with the Jaeger kid- the one that wants to kill all the titans. However, there’s no fury in her eyes like the other boy’s, just a soft twinkle in her eyes and slightly raised eyebrows.

“Ber-Bertholdt Fubar. You’re, uh, always hanging out with the other two- Armin and Jaeger, right?” He tries not to be too firm with his grip, but she flexes her fingers and he grunts in response to how strong she must be. Ah, right, this was the strength of the #1 spot. He swallows dryly, wondering if he can pull his hand away.

He doesn’t have to think too long, as she pulls her own away from his (slightly sweaty) grasp, a slight nod to the right in acknowledgement of his question. “Yes, I guess that would explain it.” She pauses, her eyes narrowing to the side as she thinks. “I’m sorry for bumping into you earlier, I wasn’t watching my step.”

“Oh, it’s no problem, I swear.” He licks his lips and tries not to think too hard about her in uniform, swinging low on the wires to slice into someone’s flesh. “I’m, eh, ki-kinda used to it by now.”

“I see.” Mikasa nods, head tilted to the other side. There’s a long pause and Bertholdt can’t find a comfortable place to look. He settles for directly over her head, when Annie watched over the two of them with an amused look. “Ah, I’m not very good at casual conversation.”

 _You don’t say?_ He thought bitterly, but thought better of saying it. He wasn’t too grand at it either, so he kept his mouth shut and tried to resist rocking on his heels. Annie, with a wry smile, shifted her weight against the wall, raising an eyebrow to the two of them.

“...I just wanted to say that we’re both in the top five, so we should be better acquainted with one another- if we will be fighting together.” Her voice is kinda quiet, yet it’s the first time he’s acknowledged emotion in it. She’s obviously embarrassed, and she plays with the edge of that red scarf she always wears. “If you need anything, I will be certain to help.” She nods to herself, as if making certain of this fact in her own mind.

He’s at a loss as to what to say, but he nods, even though he assumes the words to be empty sentiments. The types of favors he would need would definitely be frowned upon by her and her cool eyes. “...Thank you, Mikasa.” Again, he doesn’t believe them to be on first-name basis, but recognition sparks in her eyes and she smiles in a relieved manner. “Uh, same goes to you.”

“Yes, thank you, Bertholdt.” His name sits oddly on her tongue, the way she says it sounds utterly foreign to him. He turns the second of sound over in his thoughts, wondering if that’s what his name always sounded like, with that inflection of gratitude. “Well, good bye. Have a good night.”

“To you too.” He responds absent-mindedly, lost in thought as she glided away on light footsteps. Whatever friendship she had to offer, he was more than certain that he was not the person to deserve it. Annie sashays up to him with a loud chuckle shaking itself out of her, snickering at his awkward expense.

A kaleidoscope of ash-gray eyes, fumbling fingers over red material, and the gentle inflection of his name played behind his eyelids that night.

-

He's unsuspecting when he falls ill, deep in slumber after a night of keeping an eye on Reiner (who had decided he could promote his endurance by doing training in the rain. In the middle of the night). Reiner's training did nothing- Mikasa remains top of their squad. All it did was land Bertholdt with a severely agitating case of the sniffles and a high fever.

He's used to high temperatures, of course, how could he not be, but it had given him ghastly nightmares and he had overslept. Roll call was an hour ago- yet he can't summon the strength to move his limbs off of the cot. He's drenched with sweat, one leg bent awkwardly onto the wall and the other tilted off his bed. Bertholdt never fit too well in his bed, and improvised sleeping patterns were of the norm to him.

He can only assume that Reiner informed Shadis about his condition, he can faintly recall a cool hand on his face in the midst of the long, gory dreams. It hurts to move, and his throat feels like he was forced to swallowed their rusty cutlery. When he coughs, his whole bed shakes and the leg balanced precariously off the edge slips further, and he finds himself falling.

It was not a far fall, but when he hits the ground, Bertholdt lets out a pained groan, wondering how he’ll manage to crawl back up. One of his legs remains on the bed, and he contemplates somehow flinging his body back upward using that leg. Putting the slightest bend in it, he receives a sore reminder in the form of protesting joints.

He’s long since broken into a sweat, a gross, unpleasant sweat that he only gets when he’s ill. Rolling his neck so that his face is cradled in his shoulder, he manages to knock a few beads off of his forehead and nose, only making his situation slightly less uncomfortable.

There’s a low knock, a pause, and then someone turns the handle to enter. He’s not in the position to argue- he can barely move and is so damp that his clothes started sticking to him. Closing his eyes, he tries to regulate his palpitating heart from its falling panic. “Thanks for coming back for me, Reiner.”

“Ah, sorry, it’s me.” His relaxing heartbeat doubles its tempo as he recognizes the voice. Levelheaded and gentle, with strong inflections on an occasional syllable. “I’m Mikasa, remember?” Her question doesn’t really sound like a question, and he’s almost certain she believes that he wouldn’t remember her.

He remembers too much of her, to be frank.

“Oh, uh, um.” He wishes he had the strength to move, to grab his shirt and wipe the sweat from his brow- he’s knows he stinks, of all the times for her to come speak with him. He flails briefly, trying to get up, but knocks his foot off of the bed, and the whole leg hits the wood floor with such a loud thud that Mikasa hissed through her teeth. “Um, um, this isn’t a good time-”

He didn’t even hear her cross the room, but suddenly her cool hands are on his shoulders, pulling him up slowly. Bertholdt has no time to be amazed at her precision or care, however, because he suddenly found himself in her arms, one arm under his knees and the other behind his back.

She’s slow when she sets him down on the bed, waiting for his heavy breathing to calm each time she eases a limb back into place. She pulls the sheet out from underneath him and grasps the whole thing in her fist, and his eyes flicker in interest and confusion. The cot is more comfortable than the floor, though, and she easily hefted him up onto it, so he has no protest with anything she does afterward.

And then she pulled out one of the blades from her 3D maneuver gear.

His heart jumps into his throat, a messy and terrified jumble of ‘ _I’m going to die’_ s playing long sonatas in his mind. He can’t move, she’s the only one there, and he can’t transform, he’s going to die and he deserves it, he’s going to die, he’s going to-

She uses the blade to tear the sheet into strips of even length, then re-pockets the sword. Glancing down at him, she notes the terror in his eyes. Setting the long strips of fabric down by his fingers ( _if he knew what she was going to do with them, he would do it himself_ ), she stepped away from his bed. One by one, she popped the buckles on the leather that surrounded her, lowering the gas canisters and the dual boxes of blades onto the ground around her.

Pressing her hand to his forehead, she tried not to flinch at the high temperature- to keep him calm.  “I just came from training- Shadis excused me. You have a fever, so I’m going to wet these strips and try to cool you down.”

Bertholdt can only look at her in amazement. She picks the strips up and, with a bow of her head, excuses herself, possibly to the cafeteria for water. In the time being, he focused on calming his breathing. This kind of treatment, tender words and genuine concern, felt foreign to him in fantastic ways. There was the issue, of course, of it distracting him from his mission (how could he forget?), yet he couldn’t muster up the energy to care enough.

“I’m back.” He had noticed her leave, but her return was silent until her announcement of it. He can feel her cold hand on his forehead again, and he doesn’t want to move away from it. _‘Pathetic, you’re pathetic, wanting her to care about you’._ His own mind chastises him, and he feels the guilt set in.

The situation is heavily ironic. Humanity’s strongest trainee is wrapping drenched pieces of cloth around the Colossal Titan. He would laugh if it wouldn’t hurt him. When she finishes wrapped him up to her liking (his ankles and forehead and wrists and collar bone all have a thin sheet over them), she manifests a small hand towel.

Mikasa pats his hair dry and is precise when she clears beads of sweat off of his exposed skin. When she finds him sufficiently dry (he knows her hard work will be ruined in minutes, especially with her here, and frowns), and crosses her legs and sits by his bed. She has a small medicine cup full of honey on her palm, and she places it in his, nodding to him.

He’s not nearly as achy as he was before, the cool strips seeming to have worked some magic, and manages to sit up on his own (with more than a few internalized curses). Downing it, he finds his throat momentarily soothed and heaves a sigh of relief. Mikasa smiles to herself and tucks her chin to her chest, a content smile on her face. His heart thumps irregularly in his chest at her expression, feeling like he’s stuffed full of marshmallows. Everything’s soft and dulled down and it’s like theres sunbeams pointed at Mikasa Ackerman.

Was this a fever dream?

No, no it couldn’t be, because she seems so real, and they’re so close together that he can feel the warmth radiate off of her side and onto his legs when he perches himself on the edge of the bed. He wants to say something, but everything he thinks up sounds horrible and not equivalent to any of the emotions he was experiencing. Did she come all the way to the boys’ cabin for him? She was top of the squad, it would be easy enough for her to be excused from training for a day.

He feels a little cooler, so he assumes that his fever has tapered down just in the slightest. Mikasa is a quiet person, he knows, and he’s thankful for that trait tenfold. He’s never been very good at talking to girls, let alone pretty girls, _let alone ethereal girls like her_. He breaks out into a sweat just making eye contact with Annie- being in such poor condition around Mikasa makes him want to fling himself out of a window.

She stands abruptly and startles him so badly that he almost falls backwards onto the bed. She steadies him, her fingers clasped around his biceps, pulling him back. Her breath is even as it blows across his face, feeling almost unrealistically cold, and he gets an up-close view of her eyes. His heart stops in his chest. When she is certain he won’t fall over, she straightens herself again and he can breathe. “Do you need anything else?”

Half a million things flit through his mind, some dumb things, like _‘I need you to hold my hand’_ to things he immediately feels guilty about like, _‘I need to get of this mission’._ Overpowering it all, however, is the steady mantra of ‘ _God, I don’t deserve this_ ’. “No, no I’m fine.” Bertholdt struggles in making a decent enough smile, unable to figure out how to balance out teeth and lips to make it unthreatening or something even close to resembling confidence.

“Alright.” He waits, yet she doesn’t move toward the door. Instead, Mikasa traces her eyes over him in a calculating stare that makes him break out into a heavier sweat. What could she possibly be staring at? “Take your clothes off.” There’s no question in her voice, no room for doubt, and his hands go for the string of his shirt before he fully processes the command.

He lets out a shrill that scrapes his soothed throat. Letting out a round of coughs, he finds her hand in between his shoulder blades, rubbing in smooth circles. “Wh-what do you mean?” He can’t process what she’s asking, his own thoughts clouded by his own desires, the ones he immediately berates himself for. It feels borderline... sacrilegious is the only word he can think up to match the degree of those thoughts.

“You’ll make yourself sick if you stay in wet clothes.” She gives an uncertain nod to herself, pain flashing through her eyes. “Doctor Jaeger always told me so.” He almost regrets his question, because her fingertips fold around her own ribcage, as if holding a wound. Past-tense insisted that the person was gone, and the only other Jaeger he knew was Eren- possibly Eren's brother or father? "Do you need assistance taking your clothes off?"

Her blunt questions are definitely not helping his quivering heart, and the thought of her stripping him is enough to make him choke on it. "N-no, I sh-should be able to... Uh... Handle that myself."

Mikasa nods in affirmation before she saunters over to the small dresser. He doesn't know how she knows exactly where his clothes are, but he can only make wild guesses. Perhaps it had something to do with her (technically against the rules) visits to Armin and Eren in the dead of the night. He doesn't questions her out loud, even as she takes out a fresh set of pajamas for him and disappears out the door again.

Bertholdt takes it as his cue, peeling off clothes that clung in the most uncomfortable places. His arms were sore, making the whole process difficult to finish quickly or efficiently. Embarrassed and damp in his gray boxers, he scrambles for something else to cover him.  Mikasa enters in the same quiet manner she always does, as if she knew exactly when he'd be decent. She has his pajamas, folded up neater than when they were in the dresser, in her arms. Respectfully, her eyes are averted from his bare form, and she offers the clothes to him silently.

He takes them with a blush that starts from his chest up, noting that they’re slightly warm. “I took them out in the sun- warm pajamas are better than colder ones.” Mikasa has an odd way of reading his mind, and an even stranger way of being kind to him. It’s nothing textbook-like, or even like anything in those trashy romance novels he’d once swiped from Annie. She seems pure, almost childlike, in her mannerisms, even though he knew she was a fierce soldier.

She turns on her heel to face away from him, allowing him to re-dress himself. He makes it a quick matter, trying to not inconvenience her any further. When he finishes, he smooths out the wrinkles, takes even breathes, and tries his hardest to stop sweating. “Er, thank you, Mikasa.” She’s genuinely went a little over the top in making sure he was comfortable, and it leaves him with a warm tingle in his chest. She turns around and seems to let out a breath.

“It’s no problem, Bertholdt. I told you that I would make certain to help you if you needed anything.” She tilts her head and makes eye contact with him and, slightly startled, he realizes that she had genuinely meant her earlier statement. It had been a week since that day, and he had assumed them to be empty words with no meaning. His name seemed more emphasized in her sentence, and he unconsciously swallows  “We’re both soldiers, there is no need for us to be strangers.”

Mikasa pushes him gently toward the bed, not hard enough to actually move him, just enough for him to get the message. Bertholdt backs up until the backs of his knees hit the bed frame, then he sits himself down. He finds the small towel she’d brought earlier by his pillow and, rearranging the damp strips of cloth across his forehead, pats away at the sweat along his brow and down his nose. “Ah, Mikasa?” She turns to face him, her eyes warm in a way that he could only compare they to burning charcoals. He swallows, as if contemplating his next words, yet they slip off his tongue unintentionally. “If you ever need anything, just ask. I, uh, really appreciate this.”

Appreciation was an understatement- his body hummed with some unidentifiable emotion that made his heart pound and tongue grow heavy. There was some sort of attraction from her to him- he wanted to reach out and wrap his arms around her, if only for a second... The fever must be getting to him. Even if she did allow his company, it would hardly be safe for them to be friends- on her end. Annie would definitely declare her a liability and they would be forced to part.

Reiner... He wouldn't know what Reiner would say, considering the scrambled mess of his current state of mind. Maybe he'd be supportive? 

Her smile exhausts him in a good way- makes his eyes droop and cheeks puff a little. He doesn’t know how or why or what the feeling is, but it’s not unpleasant- he wishes they could stay like this. “Bertholdt, am I saying your name correctly?” Her voice has the same embarrassed unease as when she said that they should be acquainted with one another. His name still sounds foreign on her tongue, but he can’t figure out if it’s how she’s pronouncing it or her Wall Maria accent.

“Yes, of course.” Even if she isn’t, he doesn’t want her to pronounce it any other way. He watches as she wordlessly mouths his name to herself, his heart ready to give out on him.

He’s being utterly selfish, wanting this odd caretaking to mean something more. He can’t even blame Mikasa, who wordlessly ducked her head with a happy blush and a tiny smile when he told her she could rely on him. He didn’t care of the implications of such a statement- she had willingly taken care of him and pushed every single one of his soft spots.

The Colossal Titan was under the thumb of one of humanity’s strongest.

 

 


	2. She Gave Him a World of Sighs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A continuation of the previous chapter, shortly after Eren's trial.

When she grabs his hand, still fully decked out in her 3DMG, he finds no fear in him. Humanity’s strong soldier, armed with every single one of her weapons, should’ve aroused a nervous sweat or, at least, a frown on his face. Yet he can feel no such unease from paranoia, just the light grip of her fingers as she pulls him out of the training area.

Shadis is basically wrapped around her fingers- training is optional for her, with the highest solo-kill number of all the trainee squads. As long as she’s the one pulling them aside, he could care less as to why she’s leaving. He even let them take the equipment, with Mikasa’s thin excuse of ‘one-on-one’ training. With a grunt, they were excused.

Her fingers rub the back of his hand like it’s a worry stone-like she’ll eventually weather down a path along his knuckles. The gesture is, in no way, romantic, just a little platonic motion that seems to re-assure her. He doesn’t mind, but his hand feels like a bear’s paw in comparison to her tiny (yet calloused) hands. Bertholdt has no clue where they’re going, and the realization beats the all-too-familiar hum of paranoia through his veins.

She can feel his palm suddenly go clammy and pauses her quick strides (to compensate for his long legs, she had to move her own at an uncomfortable rate). He drags her forward a little, by accident, not noticing that she’d stopped. Her thumb stopped moving, and her eyes trace over him. “I wanted to talk to you about something.” Another pause. Her eyelashes flicker, but she doesn’t blink. “Alone, specifically. I assumed the forest where we first trained would be solitary enough.”

A completely different slew of fear ran through him. Alone? With Mikasa? Sure, they shared idle conversation in the cafeteria, and she’d nursed him to health before, but the implied intimacy of the situation made his chest hurt. He finds his mouth forming words before his mind even thinks them, “Is something wrong?”

Of course there is.

Everyone in the squad knew the horror of Mikasa’s anguished face as the captain of the Survey Corps beat Eren’s face in again and again. Even after it was ascertained that he would be safe within the Corps, her muffled screams in her sleep could be heard even as far as the boys’ cabin. Armin never slept those nights, just waited until she forced herself asleep, then shocked herself awake with sobs. He would quietly pad out the door and to the girls’ cabin, where he comforted her when none of the girls were able to. If Shadis knew what he did, he didn’t let on.

Reiner eventually got the information from Armin- everyone worried, yet no one had the heart to ask her about it. She blamed herself, he said. She’s convinced they’ll hurt him, or experiment on him, or kill him when he can’t meet their demands. She goes into hysterics, lost in her nightmares, but she doesn’t tell Armin what they’re about. She’s stressed, she can’t eat well, yet she throws herself into training, coming out of interpersonal fights with split knuckles and no injuries.

Bertholdt isn’t brave enough to comfort her- he frankly doesn’t know how to, either. She’s strong, an immobile stone in a fight, equal to Annie. Her emotional instability makes him want to cry for her, and he has shed more than a few tears into his pillow, eyes open and her voice breaks him. Everyone has cried for her, no matter how they’d denied it.

Her pause in conversation is too long, leaves him in his thoughts for too long, and its obvious she’s upset. Like thumbprints, shadows contrasted her eyes. She’s tired. “Ah, no, I just wanted to talk.” She has a deadpan way of lying- where it’s almost believable until he reviews the evidence that points to the fact that she’s in incomparable pain. Her thumb is wearing down his skin, and he wonders if she will leave a bruise. He doesn’t mind- if this is how he can help her, she can squeeze his hand until it’s purple and black.

Without warning, she engages her 3DMG, attaching herself to the first tree of the forest and pulling herself upward until she’s perched on one of its branches. He squeaks a little in surprise, taking a moment to follow her. She swings effortlessly through the trees, like she’s a bird- graceful in a form that makes him forget that she’s killed so many like himself.

He can never seem to get that through his head, can never add 2 and 2 to get a gorgeous, kindhearted titan slayer.

They go deeper and deeper in, until they reach a clearing. Bertholdt faintly recalls dummies being put up, with pads on the back of their necks, with Reiner, Annie, and himself perched far away, unnerved at the simulation. Mikasa pulls both her lines from the tree she swung from, letting herself fall. It seemed like too far of a fall, he realized too late.

“Mikasa!” With his heart so far up his throat that he could almost taste blood, Bertholdt pressed down the trigger to release gas- desperate to catch her in time. He swung too high- his feet just barely skimming her head. Images of her broken, askew body filled the space behind his eyes.

She landed nimbly on her feet, knees slightly bent. He almost vomits, midair, in relief. Letting up on the triggers, he sends the cords to the base of a tree near her, stressed and covered in sweat. Mikasa observes him, her grey eyes flickering as she took in his wild eyes and quivering upper lip. She strides closer to him, her fingers closing around one of his shirt cuffs. “Were you worried about me?” The question is blunt, and she almost seems baffled at the idea.

He bends in half, trying to catch his breath, his sleeve slipping from her grasp. “Of... course... Why would.. ‘nt... I be?” He lets out a particularly difficult huff of air, then feels her fingers on his back, rubbing smooth ovals around his shoulders.

“I’m self-sufficient.” She states it as a fact. “Leave the worrying to Armin.”

He catches his breath and rights himself, trying to stretch nonchalantly. Her hand leaves his back, and he misses it, strangely. “W-well, usually people just don’t d-drop out of the sky- four meters above the ground...”

Her bitter laugh unnerves him, mostly because it is quiet, like he wasn’t meant to hear it. She folds her legs underneath herself, sitting in the expanse of long, green grass. Bertholdt hesitated in sitting next to her, before he decided on a good amount of distance and crossed his legs.

There’s a long, uncomfortable silence, then Mikasa’s voice strums out. “I want to say I’m sorry in advance. I do understand that using you for emotional support like this is taking advantage of you.”

Her words make him freeze, his teeth sinking into his heart again. She has a way of eliciting such reactions from him. Her words pain him, mostly because of their implication- her emotions aren’t worth talking about. Bertholdt’s hand hovers over her shoulder, wondering if such physical contact would be appropriate. “Mikasa, it’s perfectly fine to talk about your problems.” He’s proud of his lack of stuttering and dry skin, even though his heart shakes at his brave words.

“Ah.” She leaves the sound hanging, her eyes millions of miles away. He brings his hand on her shoulder, rubbing the same pattern as she had before. “I want... to tell you about that incident, 6 years ago. It’s how Eren and I met. Would you consider this as repaying my favor?” It’s the first time she’s looked him directly in the eye since they’d arrived at the clearing.

Her wording seems strange, and slightly dark. His courage shrivels up and his hand shies away from her back. “Th-this shouldn’t, uh, count as, um, repaying your favor, though. This... This is just... friends talking, right?”

She makes a startled noise, her eyes impossibly reflective. “We’re... friends, Bertholdt?”

“I... thought so.” He uncomfortably scratches the back of his neck.

Her fingers wind in her scarf, pushing it over her cheeks, her face flushed. Blunt-mannered once more, she spoke. “That makes me happy.”

“Er... You’re welcome?” The next silence is comfortable, and she shifts toward him in the slightest. Bertholdt aims to breathes slower and calm his heart rate. His fingers trail up her arm to bring her back to him. Her eyes zero in on his, but he forces his fingers to remain on her shoulder. He pitches his voice to a quieter tone, softer and more beftting of the scenery. “Now, what about Eren?”

He can hear Mikasa’s breath catch, her puils dilating, “Ah, yes, six years ago.” She hesitated, her lip finding her front teeth. Bertholdt moved around her to face her, watching her slowly guard herself. “I can trust you to-”

“Yes, you can trust me.” Now is not the time for insecurities- or fears or heart palpitations- or guilt. Mikasa is drowning in a fast-paced river and her fingers are searching for an anchor. In a motion that he’s not sure is entirely platonic on his end, he wraps his fingers around hers.

“Six years ago, my parents were alive.” Her thumb is bruising him again. His stomach drops as her eyes develop a wide, unfocused look. “It- it was an unimportant day- My mother taught me my family’s symbol, my father cooked for us.” A pause, her fingers rubbed slightly at her wrist. “My father was sickly, so, every other month, Dr. Jaeger would visit us for his checkups, but it was time for my annual checkups.”

Her father must’ve died of illness. Bertholdt feels his throat dry. No, she was from Shiganshina. _It’s more likely that a titan killed them. She must’ve met Eren through his father- they were probably childhood friends._ Thoughts raced through his mind, gradually becoming more and more unintelligible and unorganized.

“We were expecting Dr.Jaeger so, when there was a knock at the door, my father opened it... with a smile.” A single tear rolls down the apple of her cheeks, but she doesn’t acknowledge it. Another one followed it closely. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. It just... hurts now.”

He doesn’t understand exactly what she means, but waits for her to continue. She was exposing her weakness to him- that much was obvious. His heart burned at the thought of anyone hurting her, even though it was more likely that she would hurt them. Mikasa appears to be waiting for his response, but he can’t speak. He reaches out and swipes away the tear tracks from her face. She flushes, apparently embarrassed, but doesn’t duck her head away.

“Two men opened the door.” He starts as she continues her memory. Her fingers crush his hand. “My father was confused but- but didn’t- My father had an ax cleaved into his head.” She chokes but continues on, her eyes narrowing and reflecting a deep-seated sadness. “My mother grabbed her sewing scissors and ran at the men- I don’t- Was she stalling them?” The question was to herself, and she comes to some sort of horrid conclusion as her eyes widen again. He doesn’t ask her what went wrong. “They severed her jugular artery with the ax.”

Her concise manner of speaking doesn’t unsettle him, just gives him a heavy sense of pity that sits on his chest. Was this the source of her nightmares? Bertholdt had never been good at comfort- he was known as “Bertholdt the Baby” in his village because he was always the crier. He moves his arms around her, patting at her hair. It was soft to the touch, and he wanted to just curl around her and shelter her from the merciless world. Words climb out of his throat, unbidden. “That’s too horrible for-”

“They stole me.”

“They did what.” These are the words he truly chokes on, as scenarios run through his head, his teeth pressed into his tongue. A fierce protectiveness shoots through him, an adrenaline rush to match no other, even though she was safe and currently in his arms. He can feel himself sweating, his body venting out transformation steam. He tries to calm his breathing, follow techniques he’d been taught to keep himself from shifting, but ends up feeling sick to his stomach, bloodlust lacing through him.

“I am Asian.” Her tears have dried, this part of the story apparently not as painful as the previous one. “Half-Asian. I am apparently worth a ‘juicy profit’. I was to be sold to the highest bidder. I was... not worth as much as my mother, however, so they planned on lying about my heritage, to boost the price.”

His fingers push into her pliable skin, seeing red now. How had she been able to worm her way into his heart like this, to the point of these words triggering him so? “G-Go on.” He speaks through grit teeth, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He is normally so in control, yet he can feel the pull of insanity upon him, a feeling that makes him want to tear into something.

“Bertholdt.” She says his name like it’s a breath of air, light and soft and everything he’s not feeling. She turns in his grasp, tilting her head to his. “Please don’t get angry for my sake.”

There are a million reasons he could deny why she is definitely worth getting angry for, beginning somewhere around ‘important’ and ending around ‘kindness’. His own thoughts worry him, as they are more unintelligible than usual, then her fingers cup his heated, sweating face. Like an ice pack, he cools down as he stares into her eyes, darkened to a charcoal color, then heats up for a different reason.

“He killed them.” Mikasa says this without blinking, as if the statements meant nothing to her, but it meant the world to him. “Eren hid a knife behind his back and stabbed the first man in the stomach. The second one pursued him, but he hid in a closet. He tied the knife to a broom and ran out, ending up stabbing the other man multiple times in the chest.” Her words suddenly gained weight, and she was far away once again. “There was a third man.”

“A third...?” He’s basically there, can feel her fear at being captured, her fear at some small boy running in to slaughter the men that had stolen her, stolen her life, bartered her- He has to calm down. Her fingers tremble as they run down his cheeks.

“He told me... ‘It’s over now. You’re going to be okay.’” Tears ran down her cheeks again. “The third man... Came in and kicked Eren before- before he could get to the knife. He grabbed-” She was having difficulty maintaining her indifferent retelling of the stories, swallowing multiple times. “The man grabbed Eren by the neck. Eren... told me ‘Fight’. ‘You can’t...win without fighting’.” Her fingers have left him, instead meeting her own forehead, rubbing circles to calm herself. She looked physically sick. “I stabbed the man, killed him in only one strike.”

That didn’t bother him. Not in the slightest. He had no clue to even the magnitude of the number of people he had easily slaughtered just by twitching his foot in the right direction. Mikasa was innocent, a sleeping lioness that had been provoked. He felt no sympathy for the people Eren and she had killed. “And... that’s why you’re so attached?”

“No.” Her answer is blunt, and she curls her fingers into her scarf again. “I told him I was cold, I had no where left to go. He... gave me this scarf, told me it was warm. He told me ‘Let’s go home’.” She lets out a dry sob. “‘Our home’.”

He has no words. “You... That’s what those nightmares-”

She seems well aware that she’s particularly vocal in her nightmares, a slight glint of shame reflecting in a twitch of her eye, yet her mouth hardens into a line. “That pygmy, he beat Eren the same way- the same way that man did.” She scrubs her eyes with her forearm, until her face is dry. “The same type of kick, against his stomach and across his face... I wasn’t able to do anything- I’m worth a hundred soldiers, but I’m not Humanity’s Strongest.”

He has no words, just curls his arms closer around her, his nose buried in her crown. He thought it was the other way around, but now she is his anchor as he sobs loudly in sympathy. She’s struck something in him, something vulnerable and open only to her, and suddenly they’re not soldiers anymore. Just two teenagers, crying about the world. When it all boils down to this, there is nothing but mournful empathy, as they both tuck themselves together, lying down on the grass and praying they’ll come back to a gentler world.

 


	3. She Came from a Fairy Land

Their whole situation is wrong in a way that he desperately wants to be right.

Mikasa is devilishly good at lying to Shadis, telling him the exact points of which she had worked on with Bertholdt, from his passive demeanor to how he held himself in his 3DMG. Shadis had mentioned nothing, save for a grunt about proficiency or the gifted, his eyes usually focused on Sasha or Connie, both making fools of themselves. Bertholdt doesn’t mind the lying, he does it all the time, and the reward for her bending the truth more than makes up for it.

She always pulls him from camp by his hand, leading him with entwined fingers, holding his hand even after they engage their maneuver gear. He’s impressed at her ability to anticipate how much gas he’ll let out and to balance herself accordingly so as to not let go of his hand, but she’s always impressing him. When their feet hit the ground, she always lets go, finding her place to sit amongst the grass.

The idle chatter is the best part, as he gathers and collects little tidbits of information about her. Mikasa likes to sit in the little ring of mushrooms in the clearing because they were called “fairy rings” and Armin had told her that fairies would take her away if she sat in the center. “I’d like to see them try, to be honest,” She had smiled and laughed a little and he couldn’t do anything but stare. “It would be a challenge. I have no time for their drunken get-togethers.”

He’s made a huge mistake, letting her in so close, as she asks him trivial questions about his family, his village, did he have any pets? Bertholdt answers them all truthfully, as he can’t filter himself around her. “I lived in a small mountain village, outside the walls, with my mother and father.” She had crept closer, her fingers brushing against his shoulders. He had the strangest feeling that she wanted to sling her arm around him. “I took care of the village’s livestock- cows, horses, pigs. I didn’t really have choice, the animals chose me.”

The only time she edges out of her fairy ring is when he starts on an anecdote. He’s completely stupid for thinking such things, but sometimes he wonders if she is a changeling, a fairy. It would make sense in a way that makes no sense, her aptitude at everything, her beauty, her laugh- all of it unearthly and gorgeous in a way specific to her. When he talks, she listens closely, eyes narrowed and mouth pointed downward in concentration until a lighthearted moment came up, to which she would smile with him.

When they all officially join the Survey Corps and are relocated to the stronghold within Wall Rose, Mikasa doesn’t stop their secret rendezvous, they just become less frequent. There are less places for them to sneak away to, but when Captain Levi’s squad moves out to monitor Captain Hanji’s titan experiments, they have their opportunity to sneak away to the basement.

It’s surprisingly in extremely good shape, without a tad of dust in it, and he can only assume that Captain Levi came in like a whirlwind with a feather duster. The man in general frightens him greatly, not to mention his unnatural neurotic tics. His comfort doesn’t matter in the face of the mission, however, and the fact that Mikasa is here with him does make it easier to bear.

When Mikasa removes her jacket and balls it up, he’s confused but doesn’t ask questions. She’s awfully resourceful when it comes to things like this, yet he can’t figure out why she placed her ball of leather on the ground. “Lay down.” A command. He doesn’t question her, which is something he should do more often, as her life is often in her small hands. “...It’s a poor excuse for a pillow, but no one will notice it’s gone.”

He folds himself downward, nuzzling his face into the fabric and realizing how much it smelled of her. Unconsciously, he found himself taking deeper breaths, eyes closing. She smells of comfort, nothing specific, just Mikasa and nothing else. A heavy warm weight drops onto his chest after minutes pass, and he peers through a half-closed eyelid to find Mikasa laying her head on his chest.

Of course, it gets his heart pounding a mile a minute and he can’t exactly breathe properly (especially doused in her scent). When her nose brushes his collarbone, he feels his heart do a double take and blood creep up his face. Her fingers plant themselves on one side of his head, picking her fingers through his short hair. Contradictory feelings of relaxation and adrenaline run through him.

She speaks and her lips brush up and down against his sternum. “We've been working hard. We should rest. Just a little nap.” She nuzzles him and he melts under her.

“Yeah, of course.” He feels idiotic for smiling up at the ceiling like he just won the King’s Lottery, but it’s the only way to properly express the wheel of emotions rolling through him at the moment. Mikasa scoots up him, so that her nose is in the crook between his jaw and his neck. Her cool breathes fan over his ear, as if he needed a reminder of her tranquility.

He misses their clearing and its peaceful serenity, but he is thankful for the hard basement’s cement floors and Mikasa’s lack of boundaries.

Bertholdt doesn’t exactly recall when he fell asleep, just that he awakes to a loud guffaw. He’s missing the mass on his chest, and he blindly pats at his neck in confusion, eyes still closed. When he stands up, a fist curled to rub at his eyes, he realizes he just got the best sleep since he was still in his village.

“I knew you two lovebirds were always tweeting away for some reason or another, but I can’t believe I walked in on something so tame!” Reiner’s voice jolted him awake and he immediately scans the basement.

Mikasa, with her nose tucked into the fold of her scarf, is having a one-way conversation with Reiner, whose loud laughing makes him want to crawl under the flooring and die. Their sides are to him. “Reiner, please keep it down. Bertholdt is still trying to sleep.”

“Oh, shit, right.” As if he’d forgotten, Reiner’s voice suddenly drones into whispers, of which Bertholdt can’t exactly make out. Mikasa’s eye twitches, though, so he assumes there’s some sort of poking fun going on.

“I’m awake, I’m awake...” Mikasa immediately turns to see him, the smallest smile on her face. Reiner’s hand comes to muss her hair up, laughing once more.

“When did you two get married?” Bertholdt flushes, feeling a heavy sweat come on. “I could’ve suggested better honeymoon vacations than this shitty basement.”

“We’re not even together-” His protests fell on deaf ears.

“Oh man, why wasn’t I invited? I thought I had “Best Man” duties for life!” He crosses the room to Bertholdt, taking an unhappy Mikasa with him under his arm. “Your kids are going to look so cute, I’m gonna tease them half to death-”

Oh, these sentences hurt him worse than anything. He knows Reiner’s issue, the split personality that he’s taken on in the past three years that allows him to so easily forget about how marriage or children or even courting are no longer options for any of them. Fleetingly, he thinks about Mikasa in a big white dress and a veil, holding his hand down the aisle.

He’s actually not too certain that’s even how marriage happens.

Mikasa is steadily growing more and more irritated, he can tell by her twitching nose and narrowing eyes. When she powers herself out from Reiner’s underarm and uses the element of surprise to flip his best friend upside down, Bertholdt can’t even find it in him to see it as unjustified. “...Are you done?”

From his position on the ground, Reiner lets out a bit of a laugh. “Yes, Ma’am.” He’s breathless, no doubt shocked. When he rights himself, he gives her a salute. “I’ll see my way out, I guess. You can commence your ceremonies again.” He takes the long way out, going around Bertholdt and purposefully knocking into him. In a rushed whisper, he mutters, “When you do marry her for real, I call best man and ring bearer.”

Bertholdt has no clue what either of those terms really mean, but marrying Mikasa rises a blush to his skin once more, and he lightly elbows Reiner. In his departure, he shrugs, waltzing his way up and out of the basement. Embarrassed beyond belief, Bertholdt covers his face with both his hands. He peeks through her fingers when Mikasa speaks. “Well, there goes our new hiding place.”

“Uh, yeah.” It’s blatantly obvious they can’t come back here- next time it would probably be Eren or Armin popping by.

Her silence worries him, and his hands slowly slide off his face. “...Do married couples do nothing but sleep?” He doesn’t know the answer to that question, his memories of his parents foggy. “We should liven up our marriage, then.” She wags her eyebrows at him. He chokes on his spit, alarmingly red again.

“Mikasa, you can’t mean-” She laughs, a loud, unstoppable noise that ends in a little snort and her brushing tears from her eyes. If it’s a joke, it’s one only she finds funny. His mind is filled with the images of “exciting” somethings. He flushes deeper, to an almost purple, when he thinks of them kissing.

“Oh, Bertholdt, we’re not even dating.” Mikasa’s smiling, so he supposes that’s fine. “I know Reiner was just picking on us.”

“Um.” He doesn’t know what she means, doesn’t know the definition of ‘dating’. His face scrunches up, trying to figure it out. Anything he comes up with doesn’t sound right in the context.

“...Dating, Bertholdt.” Repeating it does nothing for him. “...Do you not know what that is?”

“Er, no.” He scratches behind his head, cooling down now that they’d strayed from the topic of marriage. “I don’t think we had that back in my village.”

“It’s the precursor to marriage.” Her eyebrows are drawn, as if she can’t believe he doesn’t know. He flushes again, it all comes back to marriage. “The hand-holding, cheek-kissing part.” Her explanation is simple, borderline childish, but it gets the message across.

“Courting?” Of course, it all had to lead back to courting, the one thing he can’t manage. He’s become uncomfortably aware of the close distance between them, her head tilted up to talk to him.

“I suppose it’s called courting.” She tilts her head, lips parted, as if confused. His heartbeat increases its tempo. “It’s a rather outdated term for it, though.”

“...I guess we were old fashioned, then.” He doesn’t know what to say, but he’s distracted by her and her fingers in that scarf. Is she as nervous as he is? Impossible, she is always the image of calm and collected.

“... Levi’s team should be returning soon.” However, she doesn’t make a move. She’s looking into his shaking eyes. He wants this moment, with her just taking him in, to continue into infinity or to just end. “It should be getting dark soon. I hope you sleep well tonight.”

Of course he will, with her on his mind. “Same to you, Mikasa.” His throat is inexplicably dry. With courage from some unknown source, he bends over and brushes his lips against the crown of her head. Their first kiss. He shakes as he pulls away.

Her eyes widen with some emotion he can’t identify, as he’s never seen it on her face before. He’s a coward, he recognizes this fact about himself, so he quickly makes his way to the stairs, about to ascend them. Arms close around his waist and he panics briefly, eyes wide open as he flailed in a mild struggle.

Something inexplicably soft brushes against the back of his neck and his knees buckle at the sensation. Mikasa draws in a sharp breath of air, catching his weight with difficulty. She parts her lips from his neck, pulling away. “Ah, did that hurt?”

He’s breathless and he can’t feel his knees, but there’s an inhuman hum running through him and everything feels like light. She kissed him. At the base of his neck. The irony of it all, the most sensitive spot on his whole body was the only place she could reach. She kissed the only place that could kill him. It’s good that she’s behind him, and he exhales a large plume of steam that he was having difficulty sweating off.

He’s never transformed out of sheer passion, but he fears his control will slip like this. Utterly reluctant, his hand cups around the back of his neck, as he was trained to do. “D-d-d-don’t- My ne-neck is sssssensative.” He’s wracked with shivers that leave little stings along his neck and spine. His stomach turns, like there are nests of birds cradled in it.

Though he can’t see, she smiles slightly, tucking the information away for a later use. “Alright. I’ll respect that.” She touches his hand briefly before ascending the staircase herself, taking two steps at a time. He watches her leave with a smile like a poorly drawn line.

When he definitely hears the door shut, he lays back down on her jacket, face bright red and his mouth exuding steam. Every part of him feels like he had been under too many blankets for far too long- a heat only associated with miscalculation. He knows this feeling, has never wanted to experience it first hand, but has studied it and turned it over when he read Annie’s novels.

God help him, he was in love with Mikasa Ackerman.

There were a thousand reasons why he should’ve stopped himself from getting so involved, from “titan slayer” to “best friend is the Coordinate”. Yet, as he thought more and more, there were tens of thousands of reasons why he would so obviously fall in love with her. She pronounces his name like “Bert-olli-t” because her family used to have a tomato sauce in their kitchen called “Bertolli”, for crying out loud. She’s someone he doesn’t put boundaries up for, lets her in with a smile and a nod, to the point where he might as well say “honey I’m home”.

Napping with her felt like a long nap in the sun, warm and bright and not intended to happen. He’s selfish, he berates himself internally, yet still turns himself over to stuff his nose in her jacket to memorize her scent. He’s so inhuman, it’s obnoxious.

He’ll come out of the basement eventually, of course, and then he’ll wash her jacket. Yet, maybe if he closes his eyes and pretends hard enough, he can see himself holding her instead of her jacket.

If anywhere, she belongs in his imagination, as far away from his reality as possible.

 

 


	4. A Little Less Than Romance

They’ve relocated for the third time, stealing away to themselves once more. There’s more down time after the expedition, no impending sense of doom and no immediate goal for the Survey Corps, so there are no missions or training. Annie being outed and captured as the Female Titan made their mission even more complex, but Bertholdt and Reiner have to continue on their plans. Even for them, there’s no outline just yet- they have to just wait for orders to arrive.

Until then, Bertholdt finds no issue with playing pretend with Mikasa. She’s never outright stated that he’s her lover- no, she’s never one for words- but the gentle way she looks at him rights every wrong thing in his mind. With the basement no longer an option for their meetings, Mikasa pulled him along to the attic with an exasperated look. There’s no great amount of trees for them to hide amongst and every other option is out- he hopes no one will spot them from the window.

For a lack of better description, they basically nap with one another. She’ll run her fingers through his hair, his head cradled in her lap, until his eyelids close like they were pulled by heavy magnets. Mikasa will occasionally nod off, hunched over him, her fingers still in his hair, but she mostly keeps on the look out. He shamefully loves her, knowing he has no right to and that there are other things he should be worry about- other than if she finds his hands sweaty.

If she does, she doesn’t say so.

“Bertholdt.” Sometimes, she says his name just to say it, but he always responds. Smiling, he turns to her, his cheek cradled in one palm. They’re in the attic once more, side by side, knees touching knees. The intimacy makes his heart flutter. “Would you mind if I slept here today?” Her eyes sweep toward his chest, and he knows she’s thinking about their time in the basement.

“N-not at all.” No matter how much he enjoyed it, he still couldn’t get over how nervous he was during their time alone- though for different reasons than before. He lays down and she rests her head on his chest, directly above his heart. He memorizes the curve of her smile as her breathes even out and she relaxes.

Idly, his fingers graze through her hair, wondering if it felt as nice to her as it did to him. _It’s probably a titan shifter thing..._ He’d been learning more and more about what being a titan shifter in human form actually meant through these emotions that she brought out in him. He was still trying to figure out if it was a good or a bad thing.

Mikasa nuzzles into him, her hand sliding up to embrace him in her slumber. She was like his security blanket when they met like this, no matter what, he always had sweet dreams with her. He would sleep, too, if it wasn’t getting dark and someone wasn’t going to soon search for them. He found a particularly wide set of boxes to their left that he could pull her over to if the need arises.

Asleep, she didn’t fray his nerves so bad, and it made it easier for him to melt like a bar of chocolate in front of her fire. He burrows his nose into the top of her head, breathing in and out, heaving in her scent. The familiarity and comfort of it eases him instantly, and he lets out a little grumble. She stirs, her hand patting his arm. Startled, he pulls away, trying to keep her asleep. Some of her hair has fanned out over his neck, each stimulating some small clusters of nerves that kind of makes him want to push her off of him and run away.

It’s not entirely unpleasant, however, so he’ll deal with it until she wakes up. Consciously, he pats at her hair, directing it away from his neck, but also becoming mesmerized by the texture. He’d heard Jean talk for at least half an hour straight (without a break for breathing- the kid must be some sort of Aberrant) about how gorgeous just Mikasa’s hair was (not to mention his rant on her eyes). Bertholdt could wholeheartedly agree that she was as beautiful as a sunrise, but he didn’t interfere when Jean and Eren got into a fist fight over the terms Jean had used. _Served him right._

It was wrong to feel such a claim over her when he wasn’t even officially courting her- mission be damned (when did he adopt such a mentality?), the second she asked, he would jump to it. He wants to pull out chairs for her and kiss the small scars on her hands and put wildflowers on her pillow- but he wasn’t raised in a barn. He wouldn’t do anything until she made it clear to him as to what she wanted. These moments, with her on his chest, feel stolen under the guise of "friendship".

He wants to stand away from this friendship. He wants to be lovers instead.

Bertholdt doesn’t exactly recall when he dozed off, just that he wakes up to Mikasa’s wide smile and a twinkle in her eye. She’s looming over him, blocking out everything else, his head encased in the curtain of her hair. He reaches out and pushes some behind her ear, casting his gaze about. “How long was I out?” It’s daylight beyond the window, and he’s in a singular bed, unlike the bunks he was used to.

Was this the nurse’s cabin?

“You slept fitfully. A whole night’s worth- without a single nightmare.” This seems highly unlikely, as he would’ve been sleeping without her. Her words seem physical, possibly due to the short amount of distance between them. She dips down to brush her lips against his chastely, brief and only for what seems like half a second too short.

He blinks, once, twice, three times, yet she doesn’t disappear like a mirage. His hand reaches to touch his lips. _Did that... Did that just....?_ Yet she’s rolled back onto her knees, looking down at him with a tad of a smirk, straddling his waist. His heart almost makes a swift exit by pounding out of his chest when he truly takes her in. She’s not wearing her 3DMG or her military uniform, but a white button down dress- casual wear, like what the women wore back in his village.

He shouldn’t be analyzing what she’s wearing- that’s not the big problem, though it is a big distraction. “Uh, ah, did Reiner or Captain Levi ask about me?”

“Hm?” She rolls onto the balls of her feet and slips off the bed. She stands, away from him, and his torso goes cold. “It’s been awhile since we’ve been in the Survey Corps- did you have a nightmare?” She seems to doubt her earlier statement, scanning his face and placing her fist at her lips, her smile replaced by a calculating line.

“...Pardon?” This information makes no sense to him, but maybe his mind’s a little scattered. Mikasa tends to have that effect on him. She smoothes the wrinkles out of her dress, and he looks down to see what he, himself is wearing. With a relieved sigh, he acknowledges that he’s wearing the same thing he always wears to bed- the green shirt and pants.

The fist at her lips unfurls, and presses against his forehead. “...No fever... At least you aren’t ill.” He feels the press of metal and, looking upward, can just barely make out a gold band. Her fingers move away from his forehead to press against his chest. Her smile is gentle this time, a slight nod. “You can stay in bed for a little while longer- I’ll make you some breakfast.”

“M-m-make?” Maybe he’s dead and this is his heaven. Highly unlikely, considering who he is, but that’s probably the only reason that would justify him receiving Mikasa’s cooking. She even looks like an angel in that dress. How he died would be the mystery, but maybe he finally drowned in his own sweat like Reiner said he would.

Time passes quickly, but he manages to make some observations. Like Mikasa, he’s dressed in casual wear and has a ring on his left hand’s ring finger. It’s gold with no other decoration. The room is built solidly out of oak and there are scatterings of paintings of his family around him, and only a single one (scratched out in charcoal) of Mikasa. He’d move and explore more if he was confident that he knew where he was, but she saunters back in before he could even lift his head.

“Rice porridge...?” Her voice trails off, holding the bowl in her hands. Her ears are tinted a light pink, a telltale sign that she’s embarrassed. Mikasa sets it on his chest, effectively knocking the wind out of him. _Bowls weren’t usually so heavy, were they?_

“Ah, thank you.” His hands fold around the bowl, noting its hot temperature and wondering how she could’ve carried such a hot item without burning her hands. He waits for it to cool, opting for a conversation with her. “So, where is everyone?”

She edges herself onto the bed, looking him over. “I think Reiner and Annie went out for firewood a little while earlier.” A pause, and she rakes her eyes over him. “We’re alone, for the time being.”

He wonders if she can hear either his pulse or his swallowing, both showing his nervousness, but, if she can’t, it’s plainly written on the heavy sweat he’s now laying in. “Oh, uh, yeah. Looks like it.”

Mikasa looks as if she’s ready to pounce, yet simply reaches over to grasp the spoon between her pointer finger and her thumb, directing a spoonful toward his lips. Twitching in discomfort, he parts his lips for the first bite. It tastes like any other rice porridge, bland and aged, but she made it, so it holds some weight with him. She pulls the spoon away, then twists the spoon so that she could place it easily in his grip.

“I’ll go start the laundry. You should rest more.” She places her palms on his forehead again, as if not trusting in her previous diagnosis. Her mouth quirked down on the edges, but she still leans forward to brush her lips against his brow. When she parts from him, he feels the need to pull her back and hold her, but refrains from doing so, his fingers moving restlessly on the sheets.

Bertholdt finishes the bowl in three large scoops, determined to investigate further. He moves the bowl to the side, impressed thoroughly by its weight, and stands, stretching his arms over his head. They brush the ceiling, and he quickly pulls them back, looking at his fingertips as if they’d betrayed him. The house is obviously not built for someone of his stature and, if he stood on his toes, his head could touch the ceiling.

Crossing the room, he finds a door, placed adjacent to a window. Peering through the window, he finds Mikasa sitting beside a washbasin with a bit of soap, scrubbing at a shirt he immediately identified as his own. He feels a smile form at the sight. As if feeling his gaze set on her, she turns slightly toward him, holding up a sudsy hand in greeting. Turning the handle to the door, he’s affronted with the smell of Spring and earth.

It’s not like there is an organized garden anywhere, no, but there are random appearances of purple and yellow wildflowers surrounding her. It mimics their clearing perfectly and he can feel his heart swell in his chest. His feet are bare, strangely enough, as he had forgotten to grab shoes. He doesn’t mind it, just stamps the earth down as he crosses over to her, kneeling behind her. She giggles, a sound like a kitten hiccuping, and he wraps his arms around her waist, pressing his nose to the nape of her neck.

She wriggles about in his embrace, turning to face him. _This is perfect_. There is no distractions, no interventions, just the two of them in this little backyard. He bends his head down, his eyes transfixed on her bottom lip, having been pulled underneath her front teeth. She’s the one to close the gap between them, her eyes slipping closed as her arms wrap around his neck. She rubs circles at the base of his neck, releasing some strange rumbling sound from his chest.

Against his lips, she whispers. “Bertholdt, wake up.” The implications of those words make him freeze, no longer comfortable. What was she trying to say? “Wake up, someone’ll find us.”

His eyes open wide, waking up on his back to the attic and Mikasa’s worried face over him. She’s in her uniform, the end of her scarf brushing against his nose. When she determines he’s sufficiently awake, she leans away, taking relieved breaths. He can’t even find the proper words to describe his confusion- he pinches himself to make sure he’s awake. It hurts, so it confirms that its not another consecutive dream.

“Are you okay?” Her hands move toward his forehead, just as in his dream, feeling for a temperature. Mikasa frowns, her brows furrowing. “You’re a little warm.”

“Er, no, I’m fine, I’m fine.” He is perfectly aware that his raised temperature is due to the heavy blush spreading up his neck. Flinching, he tries to explain himself. “I just, um, had a good dream.”

“ _Oh_.” She seems to take in a different way than he meant it, her ears flaring red. He doesn’t want to ask her how she interpreted it, to be honest. She pulls away from him, standing up and brushing off the back of her pants (as if there would be any dust- Captain Clean would have a cow). She offers him her hand, which he takes, pulling up to his full stance. She’s mildly winded, probably not having expected him to be so heavy, but continues to speak anyway. “Which... Which one of us should leave first?”

Her hair is messy, most likely from laying down, and he picks through it to fix the flyaways. She mirrors him, adjusting Bertholdt’s collar and patting his hair down. “You can go first.” He doesn’t mind spending extra time up there- it’d be more time to delay the inevitable slew of questions from Reiner.

She nods, pulling away from his hair, a kind expression on her face. “Ah, well, have a good night, Bertholdt.” His heart pounds as she tilts her head back towards his. Her lips mesh against his, as if she’d had years of practice or read a how-to novel on it. He stands stiff as an over-starched shirt, unsure as to how to move. He rests his hands on her waist just before she tilts her head to disconnect them. He’s left awkwardly holding onto her and staring at her closed eyelids. They shutter open, her gray eyes reading into him. “...Sweet dreams.”

“A-ah, good night and sweet dreams to you too, M-Mikasa.” His hands hover off of her waist, unsure as to whether or not to hold her again. His thoughts were like collections of exclamation points- nothing concrete. He lets her go, her boots making soft clicking sounds as she descends the staircase.

“She kissed me...!” He folds his hands around his mouth, his breathing akin to what he knew was hyperventilation. _Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out..._ “...on the lips...!” Little trills of happiness escape him, though he didn’t put up much of a fight to keep them in. Did this mean he was courting her now? Or was she courting him, since she’d been the one to kiss him?

Behind his eyelids, he could already imagine Jean saying some mushy thing about Mikasa’s face (not that Bertholdt himself was much better, but it always got under his skin when other people talked about Mikasa like that). He could stand up and, with an accusatory finger, declare that Jean was in the wrong, he couldn’t talk about Mikasa that way. When asked why, he had the best justification, better than Eren’s “she’s lived with me for three years, you sick bastard” or Armin’s “she’s my best friend, Jean, don’t be gross”. Oh, no, Mikasa is his _lover_ and if Jean wants to talk about her like that, he’ll have to face all six feet of him.

Well, in his imagination, anyway. He’s not particularly prone to violence and would rather not fight anyone. Pulling an edge of his shirt up, he wipes his forehead off, wondering if they’ll be able to meet up again tomorrow.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> {END OF ARC 1}  
> To be honest, I really want to keep this arc lighthearted- doing a big betrayal scene would really put a damper on the whole thing and I wouldn't be able to make it fit, anime-timeline-wise.  
> The next arc is an universe alteration from the previous chapters- everything previous to remains applicable, but everything after it is not how things would happen in Arc 1.  
> {NEXT ARC: THE COLLARED TITAN}


	5. The Overabundance of Humanity

“It’s getting rather old, sleeping on the floor.”

Mikasa’s voice cuts through the spacious cabin, pushing her broom out of the door, banishing a large amount of dirt with it. The two of them had been paired for these chores- apparently, the least likely to be distracted by one another. Captain Levi really had no idea.

Bertholdt leans against his mop, having trailed behind her to clean over the spots she’d reached. She’d bent down to examine some unidentifiable gunk that was determined not to move from its spot. “It’s not like we have much of a choice.” To be honest, while completely fantastic, their napping rendezvous were beginning to give him knots in his neck from strain.

Standing up, she pushes her bangs away from her eyes, taking in the rest of the boys’ cabin. He wishes he could defend his own gender, but the others had made it such a pigsty that he fears the dust bunnies will grow feral. Having worked a steady hour and a half so far, they had barely made a dent in the surplus of work needed. Balancing the broom against the wall, Mikasa began to make a random bed, pulling articles of clothing by the tens with a grimace. “Eren’s such a slob...”

While she folds his clothes, putting them to the side, he’s left to wonder how she knew which bed was Eren’s, but shakes it off. It’s not exactly right to assume things like that of your partner, especially when Eren is literally what her world hinges on. She suddenly makes a noise of disgust, drawing his attention, and he finds her face wrinkled, having found a large grease stain leaking out from a pair of pants. “Please tell me I won’t find similar things in your bed.”

He begins to sweat.

If he spoke, his voice would definitely betray him. He had a horrible habit of throwing off his clothes in the night when it grew to be too hot or too musty.

She scans the room and, by some damnable women’s intuition, locates his bed, the top bunk over Reiner’s. She climbs the ladder, folding her knees in to sit at the edge, noticing lumps underneath the covers. At the very least, he makes his bed. Pulling them back, she discovers all five pairs of his pants and (counting on her fingers) eight shirts, with innumerable socks.

He made Eren look like Captain Levi, cleanliness-wise. To add to it, everything had sweat stains.

She makes eye contact with him and sighs, not bothering to say anything to him, even though Bertholdt is awaiting her judgement (inevitably, her words would be the worst punishment). As she was assigned to, she folds his clothes and drops them off of his bed, onto the floor. They’d send them to be washed later, but he knew the stains wouldn’t come out. He groans in embarrassment. Mikasa mutters something about gross men, wounding him deeply.

She jumps down from his top bunk, landing on the balls of her feet. He turns to fight his way through Connie’s three (borrowed, yet never returned) blankets and shirts, all woven into some sort of cocoon. It was made with adept craftsmanship and he’s having trouble pulling it all apart. Reiner’s bed was easily cleaned, with no clothes hidden in the edges of the bed, and she moves down to Jean's.

Apparently, there’s something horrifying underneath his pillow, if the strangled gasp she let out was any indicator. Bertholdt stands, having almost ripped one of Connie’s tank tops in half, alarmed and looking in her direction. Gingerly, she sets the pillow back down. “Was there a spider?”

“Ah, no.” She looks uneasy, so he won’t push her any further. She fixes the bed, touching it as little as possible. Jean must have had an ant colony under his sheets. Finished, she leans against the bunk bed to look at him, struggling. “Do you need any help? That’s quite the nest he’s made.”

“I guess... That would be nice.” More strength was obviously key in cracking this master lock. Mikasa plants a foot on the center and pulls a shirt away, first try. She doesn’t seem to be worried about dirtying his blankets, but, then again, he has spares, obviously. Tossing it over her shoulder, she yanks yet another free. Bertholdt leans forward to pull as well, finding a pair of socks and another pair of sweatpants.

One article at a time, they undo the chrysalis, more confused as to how he managed to get so many things into one small space, yet still sleep in it. When there is nothing left to pull off, they are left with three blankets, two stained. Mikasa tosses them into the laundry pile, making the bed with the unstained one.

Collecting all of the linens, she tosses them into the hamper, the number of clothes and sheets well over the top. 

It concludes their chores, having cleaned both the floor, collected laundry, and made the beds. She sits at the edge of Eren’s bed, as they’re allowed to stop working for the remaining half hour before dinner. She swings her feet, an odd smile on her face, most likely of content. For the moment that he believes it’s from sitting on Eren’s bed, he burns from the inside out in toxic emotion. But, when her eyes wander, he realizes she’s admiring their handiwork, and he feels shame come over him. He’s not her keeper.

He’s hesitant to take a place beside her, knowing he’ll further wrinkle her progress on the bed, but just wants to have her close to him, slowly sitting himself down. Her nose immediately nuzzles into his arm, and he can feel her teeth poke at him a little when her mouth stretches wide into a yawn. Bertholdt slings his arm around her, pulling her closer, wondering what he would do if she genuinely did fall asleep on him. He doubts he has the heart to wake her up.

Mikasa jerks herself back into consciousness, eyes slightly crossed and lips pouted. Confusion is written over her features as she tries to piece back together what was happening. She stares at him and then shakes her head, realizing something before almost nodding back asleep. She starts herself once more. Draping her arm across his shoulders, she makes a point of keeping her eyelids up. “Let’s... Let’s sleep together. No more napping-”

“How would we even-” Her statement makes no sense to him. To actually sleep fitfully beside her seems like more of a dream than anything.

“-on cold floors or dusty rooms-” He’ll have to give that to her, the nodules in his shoulders protesting even now.

He has a feeling she would continue talking, but he starts to run his fingers through her hair, making her sleepy again. He knows she’s smart, that she probably had thought something up and was trying to tell him her grand plan for somehow sleeping in the same bed. They’ll just spend this time together, for the small time allotted to them. Muffled against his shoulder, he hears her start to talk again. “I could hide...”

Assuming she’s not in her right mind, he indulges her, nodding his head to confirm her train of thought. “Sure, whatever you want.” He admires her drive, something he’d always lacked. If he were the one who proposed sleeping in her bed, it would only be a fleeting thought and he would have no motivation to actually follow through with it.

She drapes her arms around his shoulders, using his rigid posture to pull herself up. Stretching her hands high over her head, she yawns again, looking in his direction with squinted eyes. “See you later, then.”

He laughs a little, fixing her hair from its mussed state. “Of course. Have a good night, Mikasa.”

She leans on her tiptoes to kiss the tip of his nose, a small smile on her face. “Good night, Bertholdt.” She leaves with a content expression on her face, head tilted to the side. He thinks nothing of it, just the fact that her face lights and he’s utterly smitten. He wrinkles his nose and buries his face in his hands, burning her image into his mind.

Were he not who he was, he would think there could always be some unforeseeable danger looming around the corner, that they perish in battle one day without saying their goodbyes. Yet, he was Bertholdt Fubar and, if there was any danger, he was usually the source of it. Missions can always be put to the side for a little while longer, just until he can kiss her goodbye.

...

This was a bad train of thought for him to have. It’s one that he always has trouble with derailing, now that he thinks of the inevitability of their separation or, worse yet, her hate for him. She lost her second family to a tragedy he caused and Annie, Reiner, and himself were the constant cause of Eren being in danger. She’d find out, she was always good at emotional intelligence, finding out whatever she wanted, and that would be the end for him.

Not literally, of course. He remains an utter weakling, a spineless coward, just as Mikasa had accused their whole squad of being back in Trost. He doesn’t have the stomach to even contemplate suicide. No, he placed his life in her hands intentionally. When she decides it’s time for his end, he will not resist the bite of her sword.

He loves their playing pretend, but this is reality. All good things come to an end.

-

A towel wrapped loosely around his head, Bertholdt allows a long-restrained yawn to escape from his mouth. After cramming his face full with bread in some vain attempt to ignore Reiner’s double-entendres about his relationship with Mikasa, he’d roasted in the communal showers, unwilling to raise his voice to ask someone outside to stop boiling the water. The boys’ cabin was deserted, so he must be early- the others must’ve just reached the showers. Trying to pat his hair dry never truly worked (as it always retained some light layer of sweat, no matter how much soap he used) and he tossed it in the direction of a hamper, missing it by meters.

Beginning his ascension to the top bunk, he finds an unusually shaped lump under his covers. No matter how many gears in his brain whirr and click together, he can’t figure out how he got more clothes underneath his sheets when it was just cleaned earlier that day. “Maybe it’s a laundry mess-up... I’ll have to give-” He pulled the blanket down, finding a green shirt, connected to a set of shoulders, connected to a neck, connected to Mikasa’s half-unconscious expression.

Her eyelashes flutter. As if his heart hadn’t already stopped out of sheer terror and fright, it certainly does when she starts to smile. Smacking her lips together and propping herself up on one elbow, she looks him over. “Hey.”

As if her being in his bed were the most natural thing in the world.

It takes him a considerable amount of time to locate his vocal cords and remember how to use them properly. His voice is hushed, worried someone will walk in on them. “Wh-what are you doing? You should be in the gi-girls- Oh, you are going to be in so much trouble!” He thinks nothing of himself and the implications that would most likely cost him the cozy comfort of this bed, not to mention compromising his personal health once Eren and Jean caught wind of it.

“Sasha is covering for me. I told her I was having nightmares again.” Something in her eyes informs him that the statement wasn't entirely a lie. Mikasa yawns again, scooting away from her place on his bed, to the dip in between the wall and his bed.

To his surprise, she disappeared from his sight, tucked in between that space and his mattress, supported by the bed frame. One of her eyes peek out, blinking at him slowly. “I can hide, don’t worry.” Her voice is slow, implying that she’d been asleep before he’d came. “And you’re tall enough to hide me when we go to sleep.”

He doesn’t want to admit how relieved her logic makes him. “I... I suppose so.” With one last, fleeting, look toward the door, hoping no one spots his (medium-sized) lover lounging, he ascended the last two rungs of the ladder. Now confined to the small space of the bed (and charged with smuggling Mikasa through the night), he’s mildly uncertain and a little intimidated. It takes him more than a minute to figure out if he wants to go under the covers with her or not and, when he picks the blanket up, it’s with shaking hands.

Mikasa apparently holds no such inhibition, her arms immediately coiling around his waist. She pulls him impossibly closer, with him wondering how she’s able to move him so easily, until her nose is buried in the back of his neck and he’s breathing heavily again. He can hear the door open and close, and he quickly pulls the blanket up to hide Mikasa. Craning his neck, he sees Eren shaking his hair off like a wet dog.

He literally just dodged a bullet.

He puts a half-hearted hand up in greetings, reciprocated from the other boy. Other than that, Eren quickly towels off before climbing into bed. His sleeping schedule is meticulous, making sure he’s well rested for tomorrow’s training. He’s never even had a nightmare, as far as Bertholdt had observed. The kid was terrifying to an unspeakable degree, but he was his mission. It’s a kill or be killed sort of thing.

More and more of the boys pile in, though they don’t particularly acknowledge him. Reiner jumps into his bed, shaking the entire frame and making Mikasa collide into him. Her nose scrunches at the nape of his neck, her lips smashed at a particular protrusion in his spine. She grunts, softly, peeling herself off of him. Reiner’s head pops over the edge, peering at him, a grin on his face. “Hey, now, get to sleep already- your lady friend won’t like you putting a damper on her mood. You’re enough of a literal wet blanket already!”

He laughs heartily at his own joke, though it took Bertholdt a couple of minutes to realize it was a joke about his sweating problem. Truthfully, he does let out a little chuckle at it, and can hear Mikasa’s small, rushed exhale, a restrained giggle. Pulling an arm out from the blanket, he pats Reiner on the head, laughing a little. “I’ll have no problems getting to sleep.” His smile is genuine, a light blush creeping onto his cheeks. He has nothing but sweet dreams planned for the night.

Mikasa’s arms hug him tighter and his smile becomes just a little more unfocused, caught in the moment. He almost forgets Reiner was there. “Man, okay, I get the whole best-friends-tell-each-other-everything thing, but don’t hesitate to skim the details of your skeezy dreams when you’re talking to me.” For the loud tone of his voice, he would think more people would listen in on the conversation. Yet, that was the thing about Reiner. He blended in by being so damn loud.

Bertholdt doesn’t really understand what he’s talking about, but he does make a note not to gush about Mikasa to him as much as he was before. He was even beginning to feel a little regret, recalling his recent rave about the quality of her character. His blush darkens out of embarrassment. “G-good night, Reiner.”

“Good night, Bertholdt.” Looking at the clock, it’s about three minutes before Levi comes to extinguish their torch, for the night, after taking roll of everyone.

Three... She tosses a leg over his, knotting their legs together. Her fingers flex over his stomach.

Two... She shuffles, just in the slightest, to where her nose is buried in her hair, her lips brushing over his neck.

One... He stifled a groan, biting his lip, until she searched blindly with her arm to find his hand, entwining their fingers.

The door bursts open, Levi coming in foot-first, as if he was unaware there was a door knob. He must assume it was always locked, or that their knob was incredibly filthy, because this was a nightly thing. He would most likely soon put the door out of commission. With a huff of breath, the room launched into darkness. Eren’s snores became more pronounced, as well as Armin’s shallow breathing, indicating he wasn’t totally asleep yet.

Bertholdt turns over, able to see even in this shade of pitch. It’s difficult, considering how she’d previously wrapped herself around him, but not impossible. His nose meets hers, and he nuzzles her, an affectionate smile spreading over her face. With the room dark, she suddenly seems more awake, in her own element. There’s no light from the window, a new moon, yet she gives off her own presence, the slightest frown on her face.

“I love you.” The words fell from his lips, unintentional to the infinitesimal degree, but unstoppable in this moment. It’s a whisper, just barely a gasp of air, and it takes all of his willpower to keep himself from continuing on. He’s setting himself up for disappointment- he’s a warrior, she’s a soldier.

She tucks herself under his chin, and he assumes she’s ignoring him. That’s perfectly fine, he understands if she can’t reciprocate those feelings. Her breath, cool in a strange way, like she’d chewed mints all her life, fans against his neck. Quieter than he’d been, she responds. “I love you too.”

Her words seem rushed and, underneath them, far, far, underneath them, he can detect the slightest bit of desperation. She travels up his neck, small, shiver-inducing kisses through the path she carves, until she reaches his lips. She tilts her head into the bed, away from anyone willing to look in Bertholdt’s direction and, knotting her fingers in his hair, mashes their lips together.

It is no where close to the gentle kisses they’d exchanged in private. This is passion, uncensored, and the desperation he’d sensed before, returned tenfold. He wants to talk to her, ask her what’s wrong, yet he is unable to, limited by the soldiers surrounding them, trained to wake up at the slightest loud word. When she parts from him, her eyes are clenched shut, nose wrinkled. He runs his fingers through her hair, trying to calm her down, but it seems to upset her even further.

While enhanced, his eyesight is nowhere near perfect in the dark. He can’t determine if there are tear-tracks or sweat on her cheeks. He doesn’t move for her lips, opting to graze his own against the top of her head. He rocks them, as best as he can without disturbing Reiner below them. The soft hushing sound he makes seems to agitate her further. A disturbing idea worms its way into his mind. What if she was having a nightmare right now? He’d heard of people having nightmares claw their way into their reality.

He makes a cradle out of his arms, trying to imitate a crossbreed between a stuffed animal and a security blanket. She doesn’t make any loud sounds or hiccups, and her eyes are open. Yet, he can’t think of any other reason for her to cry. He runs his fingers through her hair and rolls them, back and forth, until he, himself, passes out. From stress or comfort, he’s not sure as to which was the cause.

When he wakes up, Mikasa is gone, and there are large stains on his shirt. The bed is dented where she was. He doesn’t dwell on it, but pushes his nose into her side of the pillow to take in one last breath of her from the night. He definitely had good dreams, aside from a mild nightmare of Mikasa crying. Completely unfounded, of course.

At breakfast, he doesn’t see her. The table where Armin and Eren sit holds one too many an empty chair. Eren props his feet up on her empty chair.

Midday training passes, and she is absent. Armin stares, confused, as to who he should pair up with, his fists clenched to his chest, looking about.

Lunch, then their shared chores, then dinner. Eren didn’t eat dinner, opting to roam outside, ducking his head in and out of rooms. Armin pushes his food around his plate, his lip between his teeth. Reiner put a sharp elbow in Bertholdt’s side, his eyes cutting around as well.

Eren, Armin, and himself share similar looks of confusion, though Eren’s now hold the slightest of panic.

-

Mikasa Ackerman is missing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a transition from the previously (lighter-toned) chapters. This follows the anime's timeline, but I know what happens in the manga, so it might incorporate some little things.  
> The romance will still be pretty heavy, but I might have to put up a tag for canon-typical violence.


	6. The Problem with Inattentiveness

The headquarters grounds hold no meaning to him any more.

Without Mikasa around, the work is dull, the conversations one-sided- even the meals lack emotion, without her winking or side-eyeing him over a spoonful of mashed potatoes. Impatiently, he waits for Reiner to slip back into his other personality, someone besides the happy-go-lucky wedding-chaser who tosses him sad looks every time his eyes wander to her chair or the girls cabin. The Reiner that realizes how much of a liability him holding those feelings had been- how much it interfered with their mission.

There’s no more sense of playing pretend anymore.

For being worth a hundred soldiers, the Survey Corps most definitely wasn’t putting forth their best effort to locate Mikasa. There had been a brief sweep of the castle grounds, they had examined her portion of the cabin (her nightclothes were there- she’d gone missing wearing her uniform, sans the jacket and belts, not to mention a lack of 3DMG), and a brief interrogation with a handful of the soldiers. No one had seen her- no one that was talking, any way. Bertholdt was definitely qualified as the one that wasn’t talking. How could he describe to them in full the desperation in her kiss, his sneaking suspicion that she’d cried herself to sleep?

Armin is high-strung, worried to the point of exhaustion, drifting in and out of rooms, as if a woman of Mikasa’s size could hide inside a dresser drawer- as if she would want to. His calculations and plans (maybe she went to the market and got lost?) began to lack validity, driven partly by despair and the other part by childish hope. Bertholdt’s heard him mindlessly babble about Mikasa’s favorite hiding spots when they were children- maybe this was a game? It wasn’t until Hange personally escorted him to the cabins for rest that he realized how stressed his smaller friend was.

Well, if Armin was to be considered “stressed”, Eren was bordering self-destructive. His eye holds a certain twitch, his motions contain a specific unease, all while he adamantly insists that he’s perfectly fine. Mikasa leaving totally isn’t messing with him- it’s easier now without her to bother him all the time, ha ha ha. His hands shake when he picks things up. He frequently stares at his hands. He never sleeps either.

Bertholdt had reached the pinnacle of human emotion around her and, what with her absence like a punched hole in the canvas of his heart, he still managed to function better than the other two. Maybe it was because he was so used to people leaving? He’s not entirely sure, but he can recognize the hollowness in his motions, and the longing that grips his heart in its grasp when he sees wildflowers or red fabric.

He’s a warrior before he’s a soldier. But he’s also a man before he’s a warrior, a titan before he’s a man, and, above all, a lover before he’s a titan. She was the positivity in him, reflected in her eyes when her thick eyelashes stuttered when he complimented her. A genuine angel, or perhaps a hallucination, crafted straight out of every good dream of his. It seems natural she would leave. Anything good that happens to him usually does. If he were to say he had any suspicions as to why she was missing suddenly, he would have no answer. She had seemed perfectly happy the moments before, laughing and kissing him and- thinking about it made his whole brain fog up.

The operations and explorations were at a standstill- they were essentially trapped into a corner, missions-wise. He wasn’t about to cause another grim reminder, either. It was during routine training (keeping their maneuver gear skills up to par), performing somersaults and flips with it on, still on the ground, that he noticed something... off. Not in the usual, strange way, where everything seemed strange and foreign because of Mikasa’s missing presence. It takes him a long scan of the area to realize a red marker has been tied around a handful of branches, on outskirts of the forest, the edges fraying in the wind.

And, by everything human and holy, he knows it’s a sign. Now, he doesn’t know what type of sign, but it has something to do with Mikasa and anything to do with her is a point in the direction of normalcy for him. His hand shoots up, a signal for Captain Levi’s attention. When he’s acknowledged, he makes a point to sound very formal (and to keep the tremor out of his voice- the short man was packed to the brim with unending hatred). “Sir, I would like to train in the forest for today’s lesson, sir!” In a proper salute, he bows.

Captain Levi blinks, slowly, having to tilt his head all the way up to make eye-contact. “... Does it look like I care?” Bertholdt flinches. The rest of his sentence is mumbled. “Go be with your own kind, goddamn uprooted tree.”

“Th-Thank you, sir!” He tries not to seem too enthusiastic to be as far away from the Captain as possible, but it’s difficult, as that is the only emotion he’s experiencing currently. He begins down the hill, focusing on not tripping and falling the rest of the way down. When he meets the red marker, he tugs it from the tree, turning it over in his hands. Is it strange to say that the first thing he does it stick it to his nose?

Because that’s exactly what he does. And the marker smells exactly like Mikasa.

He frowns a little, turning over once more, figuring out that it’s folded multiple times. After unfolding it three times, he comes to the true, full length of the material, determining what it is: a red scarf. He can't restrain the slight growl that comes out of him. He touches the blades' containers on either side of him, his thoughts already ahead to some sort of battle.

Mikasa would definitely not have abandoned her scarf, not without a fight.

The second he breaches the forest, he switches to 3DMG. It's too much of a risk to remain on the ground, where he could be caught unaware. He continues straight until the direction of her scent (how could her smell permeate so well throughout the woods?) takes a sharp turn, where he then follows it.  He can feel adrenaline burning in his veins, itching for Mikasa to he alive and well, for her to have defended herself or just be lost in the woods.

Oh, God, he sounds just like Armin.

But these thoughts give him hope, something he desperately needs. She's his only hope, one of the few things keeping him in check. "...Mikasaaa?" His voice is quiet, tentative. When he squints his eyes, he can make out something barely moving in the distance, where the trees parted to an open clearing. Desperately, he hopes for the impossible. The shadow matching her frame huffs oxygen onto his internal fire.

He follows the shadow, never once considering if it were a trap, as he would've, pre-Mikasa. That's how his life could be summarized as, pre- and post-Mikasa. He was still deciding the dividing line between the two histories. Would it be the moment that they became friends, or would their moment of meeting count? It doesn’t truly matter. He just hopes there isn't a post-post-Mikasa phase of his life. He doesn't know if he could deal with that.

The shadow (and, more importantly, Mikasa's scent) pause just before a break in the trees, then disappears. He slows the output of his gas, swooping in wide arcs just before what looks to be a clearing. With a rapidly growing frown on his face, he intentionally burst through the foliage with a great amount of speed.

He lands neatly on his feet, pausing on the ground to roll his ankles to make sure they were still working correctly. After making certain that he hadn’t harmed either of his legs in his drop, he casts his gaze about the clearing. It’s nostalgic, more than a reminder of their old clearing, and he has to force himself to focus back on the matter once more. The clearing is no good if Mikasa isn’t around to see it.

It’s a lot larger than their old clearing, as well, and he’s just barely at the edge of it. It’s wide and vast and, if he squints very hard, he can just barely make out the trees that form the border of it. It makes him feel small. Ironically enough, seeing as he’s about half the size of most of the trees.

His train of thought is violently derailed when he hears a soft, gentle breath being exhaled. He holds the scarf to his chest, trying to figure out what to do with it. In the chance of a conflict, it would be extremely disadvantageous for him to just..... Oh, who was he kidding? He just wanted an excuse to wrap it around his neck.

The material is difficult to wrap around his neck, mostly because he’s trying to replicate the same manner that she ties it. He eventually gives up, wrapping it around his neck without any form of complicity. Putting one foot in front of the other, he makes his slow (and mildly hesitant) advance toward the center of the clearing.

The first thing he notices about Mikasa is the wildflower crown in her hair. It’s meticulously woven and of many layers, and he can’t help but think it makes her look like a princess. The next thing is the large fairy ring surrounding her, as she lay down, arms outstretched. The grass around her seems to have been freshly crushed, indicating she must’ve recently lay down. Her eyes are closed, her breathing even, all good signs that she’s alive and well. ...It feels intrusive to step into the circle, though getting closer to her would be impossible without doing so.

With tender care, he tip-toes into it, feeling like he’s doing something shameful. He’d always respected her distance when she sat in one of them, always on the border, but now wasn’t the time for being frivolous. She’d been missing for half of a week and the whole world had faded to black and white in her absence. Everything suddenly bursting into color was overwhelming.

Not as overwhelming, of course, as the relief of finding her safe, in one piece, and so peaceful and at ease. “Mikasa?” He folds his legs under him and sits, brushing his fingers against her cheek, leaning down and over her. The idea that someone may be waiting in the wings didn’t leave his mind, and his stance was definitely a defensive one. “Mikasa, please, wake up.” Her head lolls to the side, her lips brushing against his palm.

“Five more minutes, Mr. Jaeger...” She nuzzles into his palm. Her hand reaches blindly out, somehow being able to determine where his face was. She pats at him and he gives her a satisfied hum in return, before her hand returns to her side. A smile ghosts across her face for half of a second, before she’s neutral once more. “I’ll be ready in... five minutes.”

He moves his palm out from under her, hoping the lack of contact would wake her up. He moves to push her bangs out of her eyes, adjusting the crown as well. “C’mon, Mikasa, I need you to wake up.” He prods at her cheek, a frown tipping at his expression. Maybe she wasn’t voluntarily asleep- she had never been so heavy a dreamer.

Her eyes flutter open, immediately looking up into his. Though he knows he shouldn’t, he takes pride in the warm smile that she immediately gives him. His insides are fuzzy, like he ate cotton for breakfast. Mikasa’s hand moves up from her side, cupping his cheek in her palm. “Oh, Bertholdt.” She talks as if he were a pleasant surprise, her thumb brushing against the dark circles under his eyes. “I didn’t think you would come.”

He tilts his head into her grasp. The way she’s patting at him makes him feel kind of like a horse. “Why wouldn’t I?” He turns his head in her hand, hesitating before kissing the inside of her palm. His heart races at his own bold move. “We’re courting, of course I would look for you.” He moves his own hand to fold over hers, feeling her pulse speed.

She smiles at his response, flexing her fingers so that they were holding hands. She begins to sit up, so he pulls away, giving her the room to do so. “You brought your maneuver gear...” Was that... concern in her voice? That would make no sense in his mind, but he couldn’t deny that the tone matched the same one she’d used when he’d tripped and fell while talking to her once. “How... how long have I been gone?”

He doesn’t pursue the topic of his gear, worried about how she’d respond. “Today would make your fourth day gone-” He pauses, then considers why she might be concerned. “Don’t worry- I don’t think Captain Levi is too angry with you being gone. Everyone’s worried, so we should hurry back.” Bertholdt begins to stand, accidentally pulling Mikasa up with him. He tugs the two of them toward the forest, gaining ground before she digs her heels into the ground, halting them.

“I can’t go back there.” Her eyes are narrow and, despite his earlier efforts, her bangs have fallen back into her eyes. “Not now...” Her fingers disentangle themselves from his, traveling up her arm and pressing at the crook of her elbow. The gesture makes him nervous- it’s not one he’s seen her do before.

“It’s fine, Mikasa.” He moves back toward her, brushing her bangs to the side again. She blinks at him, wide-eyed, worrying at her lip. “Everyone’ll be happy to see you- we all missed you.” He doesn’t breach the topic of why or how she ran away. It doesn’t look like she would like him too.

When she cuts her eyes away from him, he realizes that the squads’ reactions weren’t even a factor in her hesitancy to return. “Bertholdt, could I ask you a favor?” This time, her voice is sure, each syllable carrying meaning.  

He hesitates, the inflections in her voice causing a nervous sweat to rise along his neck. She’s his lover, not to mention completely defenseless, so, on a conscious level, the fear he suddenly feels is unfounded. On an instinctual level, however... “S-s-sure, Mikasa, what is it?”

There’s a long, tense pause. He hates it- it’s so different from their comfortable silences. “...” She opens her mouth and makes an upset, huffing sound. “...I want you to kill me.”

His heart stops.

It literally stops.

There’s no metaphor that hides these physical symptoms, the shallow breathing, his immediate choking, his heart at a standstill. It would’ve been less painful if she’d asked him to kill himself. He can’t stop staring at her, feeling tears collect in his eyes. Why would she ask him to do that? It’s a horrible thing, a horrible thing for him to even contemplate accidentally hurting her but-

The request is too cruel.

His voice comes out, meek and sad, everything he doesn’t want it to be. He wants it to be confident, strong, strong enough to carry her through whatever rough patch she was going through. “Why?” No, that was not what he told his mouth to say. He had perfectly formed out the letters “N” “O” on his tongue, had breathed them almost to life. Was it that he would bend to her every whim- even if it would take one of his last anchors to sanity away with her?

Both of her hands have curled into fists. She gazes away from him, almost guiltily, worrying at her lip. He knows it’ll soon bleed, but she suddenly stops, as if aware of the action. She turns back to the matter at hand. “I’m a monster.” A pause, and he can see tears well up in her eyes as well. “A horrible, lying, deceptive monster.” He has absolutely no idea what she’s going on about.

He’d seen this scenario so often in his worst of nightmares, but, here in his reality, their roles were switched. His hands shake as he fits his blades into their sheaths, holding out the swords in front of them. He can barely breath over the lump in his throat. “No, Mikasa, oh God, no you aren’t.” He’s not even close to what someone would define as religious, but his internal chant of ‘oh no oh God’ was borderline blasphemous.

She rocks on her heels, eyes his blades. Beneath the false self-assurance in her eyes, he can pick out the terror, the self-preservation. “When they find out what I am, the Survey Corps will kill me any way.” She closes her eyes, cutting off his last true link to her actual emotions. “I would rather have you k-kill me.” The stutter gives her away. “You’d be quick about it, I’m sure.”

He puts one of the swords back into the container, steadying the other sword with his now free hand. He points it to her chest. Does he truly have the guts to do this? He leans forward, the blade almost touching her chest.

Oh, God, no, he can’t do it.

He swipes the trigger, making the blade drop at her feet. He’s outright bawling, loud, ugly, unhappy noises like a trapped and wounded animal. “Mi-Mi-Mikasa, no, no, why would you- how could you think- I can’t do this!” He’s a crying, sweaty, shaking mess. His hands tremble when they pull her closer, closer, rocking the two of them in his embrace. He could never kill her- why would he? The world seemed meaningless without her giving him her extra helping of mashed potatoes after dinner or discreetly brushing her fingers against his when they passed each other in the halls.

She’s stiff in his arms for only the barest of seconds, before she holds him tighter to her, her mouth forming words against his neck that he can’t decipher. He’s the one to pull away first, to look into her eyes for the hesitance from before, the emotion that ascertained that the last thing she wanted to do was die. It took him a while to find it. “Bertholdt... I love you.” His heart speeds up. He moves to dry his tears (he really was living up to his childhood nickname of Bertholdt the Baby, huh) with one hand, the other still at the base of her back. His heart aches at the emotional whiplash she’s providing him with. “...You know that, right? I’ll love you until I die.”

He brushes his lips against the crown of her head, holding her at arms length. “...which won’t be anytime soon.” He leans down to brush his lips against her forehead again. “I love you, too. I’ll love you until forever.”

The sound she makes is so foreign to him that it takes him a moment to realize that it’s a laugh. He frowns, wondering what part of what he said was so hilarious. She shakes her head, as if brushing away the previous conversation. Her hands are gripping his upper arms, a rather serious expression on her face. “...When I go back...” Her hesitance remains, and she rocks on her heels. He has to smile- her reluctance to return reminds him of a child not wanting to go home after a playdate. She returns his smile, though it was definitely to a smaller scale. “... I have something I have to tell Commander Erwin, as well as Squad Leader Hange. It will probably be a while.... before you see me after that.”

“That’s fine, as long as you’re coming back.” He entwines their fingers once more, happily staring at them. Holding hands with her made everything seem a lot better. With his free hand he tugs her scarf off of him. He loops it around her neck, in careful circles, ultimately having it end up looking rather sloppy. “...Let’s go home, Mikasa.”

She blushes and ducks her nose into her scarf, running her thumb along the back of his hand.

She says nothing on their trip back into the forest, up the hill, and back into the old Survey Corps Headquarters. It’s not until he deposits her in front of Commander Erwin’s front door, turning around, that he recalls what she said earlier. ‘When they find out what I am, the Survey Corps will kill me any way.’.

Suddenly panicked, unsure the decision he just made was correct, he spins on his heel, ready to pull her away from the door.

The spot she’d been standing in is empty, and the door begins to shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just some little things I have to mention:  
> 1) If you ever have some pressing questions about the story (or want to talk about bertkasa), you can find me at gardengenesis.tumblr.com :)  
> 2) If you ever want to request a story, I have information about doing story swaps on my profile (it would give me something to do, to be honest)  
> 3) This is probably going to be the darkest chapter- I want to keep the series lighthearted, as it helps me balance between my other story, Liebling Gebrochen, which is a tad darker.   
> Thank you for reading!


	7. A Better Performance

Mikasa had definitely not been kidding when she had told him it would be a while before he saw her again.

“While” was pretty relative, as any amount of time away from her felt like “a while” to Bertholdt, but a week felt like almost an infinity. An infinity laced by fear and shaded looks at the Commander’s door, then the Captain’s door, then Squad Leader Hange’s door. No one else knew of Mikasa’s return, or her re-disappearance, and he certainly wasn’t going to say anything until she was in his line of sight once again. It’s almost worse than before- he had held a (rather justified) belief that she was safe by herself, outside of the headquarter. Within these walls, however, cornered by the most certified killers around, he couldn’t prevent the doubt from seeping in.

 _They’ll kill her anyway._ The thought made him sick. He wonders if she had truly thought that would’ve persuaded him to kill her- all it did was give him an even greater sense of distrust around his fellow “comrades”. If they would want to kill her- innocent, save the fifty or so titans she killed in cold blood- what would they do to him? He prefers not to think of it.

He’s stuck, waiting on the sidelines, for the opposition to make a move. He’d defend Mikasa- he’d defend her right until they stuck a blade into the back of his neck- but it’s difficult to do so when he’s completely in the dark. What crime had she committed, that she deemed herself worthy to die? In their relationship, he was most definitely the one with the most blood on his hands.

For a handful of selfless, insane moments, he wonders, if her crime was truly great enough to be killed, if he could trade himself in for her.

As stated, it’s completely insane, not because he fears the sacrifice, but because he would drag Reiner and their village down with him. Shuddering, he acknowledges that his death wouldn’t be quick if he confessed, his mind putting forth grotesque images of torture. If that were to occur, he would definitely have to ask Mikasa for mercy and for her to just-

 _Oh. Oh, God._ He truly hopes that’s not what’s wrong with her.

-

The sun sets and rises in a long, drawn out process, and Bertholdt watches it dim eyes. He’s been joined by Eren and, after about two hours of distressed napping, Armin. Under any other circumstances, it would’ve been nice, watching the sunrise with friends. Yet, they were all recent insomniacs, alienated by the severe differences in their degree of worry. To top it all off, they weren’t even aware of his fears toward Mikasa, leaving him alone, unlike the support system they’d built between the two of them.

He’s left alone to pick at his blankets and cram his face into his pillows, as if he could suffocate himself into slumber.

When the Captain kicks the door in (the top hinge had begun to creak- Bertholdt estimated that there was, at most, another three days before the door fell off) to alert them of breakfast beginning, he’s less than enthusiastic. Reiner had gotten sick, most likely from his late-night training combined with the recent chilling weather. It was quickly fading from summer to fall, wilting the wildflowers.

Munching halfheartedly on a bread roll, alone, wasn’t his idea of a good time, if he were to be completely honest. He’d torn it, bit by bit, into smaller and smaller pieces, as if to make it more appealing. He ended up with just a plate of crumbs and an excess of jam he hadn’t wanted. He handed it politely to Sasha, a curt smile on his face, just trying to get rid of the food. Eren and Armin sit in the same spots as always, though Eren no longer props his feet up on the chair, just looks warily at it. Of course, Mikasa never spontaneously appeared out of the wood seat, as his gaze seemed to suggest.

He’s halfway out of the cafeteria’s door when he spots her. Mikasa’s just barely rounded the corner of the girls’ cabin, only her nose and her red scarf visible. He moves to wave, his hand halfway in the air, when it stops, frozen, as she continues to emerge. Behind her, both Squad Leader Hange and her assistant Moblit walk at close-range, their swords drawn. While Hange’s face held only passive interest, Moblit’s was contorted into something akin to a deep seated anger, perhaps prejudice.

She led them into the cabin, her fists curled but lacking actual anger behind it, just a motion and nothing more. No one else seemed to have notice their entourage, still participating in breakfast, so he took care in slipping out and closing the door without a sound. Keeping just barely enough distance between them to see what was going on and not be seen, he strains his eyes ahead.

Mikasa sat in the middle of the room, toward a neatly-made bed. Easily, he figures it to be her own, as her meticulous behavior dictated a made bed. When she folds her fingers in between two slats of wood, both officers tense, as if expecting her to fashion a weapon out of it. Instead, she pops the board out, reaching her arm underneath, something he can’t see from his position. Idly, he moves his eyes away, as to not seem so suspicious.

When he glances out of the corner of his eye, however, making a very slow (and not very convincing) walk to the showers, he finds her holding a wooden box, about the size of a thick encyclopedia. Hange leans forward, eyes wide in interest, lips parted. Immediately, her assistant pulls her back, whispering something about caution in her ear. Bertholdt can see Mikasa’s shoulders rise and fall in a sigh.

He hastens his pace as Moblit whips his head around. He catches the door with his foot, shutting it closed, cutting off his inspection. Bertholdt freezes, glancing about for a window without the curtains drawn. When his search comes up short, he can feel his heart beat in his ears. God, what could possibly be happening?

Trying to keep his mind off of it, he speeds his way to the communal baths, little puffs of steam escaping his mouth.

-

He’s already resigned to another sleepless night, cocooning himself in his blanket, peeking out from the top to stare at Eren and Armin. “Mikasa’s back.” It’s a simple enough phrase, but he strains himself to remain sounding indifferent. Their eyes immediately snap to him, Eren’s narrow and Armin’s wide and darting. “She was... walking with Squad Leader Hange and her assistant Mobilt.”

The smallest flicker of panic threads through Eren’s expression, before it contorts into confusion. At the fear or Bertholdt’s statement, he couldn’t tell. Honestly, he didn’t even know Eren that well, save for him being the Coordinate. “Why the hell would she be with Hange?” Eren pulls his covers over him, grumbling to himself. “...Didn’t think you were a liar, Fubar...”

While the accusation does wound him, Bertholdt takes comfort in the light in Armin’s eyes. “Maybe they were just doing some personal training.” The smallest hint of a smile comes onto his face. “Maybe Mikasa’s being promoted! Imagine that, Captain Mikasa Ackerman...” That certainly was a thought. He wonders if she would choose him to be in her squad, or if the other 104th training squad members would take priority over him.

As more and more of the bed fill up, everyone heading off to sleep, Armin is able to sleep easily, but both Eren and Bertholdt remain in a joined stare. It ends when Bertholdt’s heart lurches at his narrowing eyes, making his own eyes dart away in momentary fear. “Creepy...” He tries to bury his face in the pillow once more, just barely able to smell dandelions and antibacterial soap.

He misses her.

-

The next day, Levi kicks the door in at least an hour earlier than usual. They’re to meet in the training ground, line up, and await further instruction. Bertholdt struggles to finds the arm holes in his shirt, struggles to pull the balancing straps from his 3DMG up. He’s amazed that he put the whole uniform on correctly, with his eyes glazed over from lack of sleep. Eren’s completely able, however, and he immediately blames it on his recent titan-shifting. It’s obvious it’s doing something for that bastard’s health.

He really needs to sleep soon, for his own sake, because he doesn’t truly think poorly of Eren. It’s the exhaustion speaking, he wishes nothing but the best for the aggressive thumb-biter. He feels a burning jealous at his advanced motor ability and the fact that he can put on his shirt without needing Reiner to undo the sleeve. For lack of a better verb, he slumps out of the cabin, barely dragging behind the rest. He only straightens his spine when they actually arrive at the grounds, immediately scanning the area.

He has a horrible, horrible sneaking suspicion that this has everything to do with Mikasa.

They’re arranged into a perfect line by Captain Levi, and they all salute when Commander Erwin arrives, his hands folded behind his back. There are trace lines of worry across his forehead, his eyes just barely narrowed, and he seemed to have light gray shadows under his eyes. “Soldiers,” At his voice, they all adjusted their posture. “As you all are aware, Private Mikasa Ackerman went missing for the duration of a ten days.” There’s a pause, and whispers ensue. The furrow in Eren’s brow deepens, and the fist behind his back clenches tighter. “It appears as though she did not desert voluntarily, but out of her concern for our safety. While I am unable to disclose with you the entirety of the situation, I would like to inform you all that she is safe and within the Survey Corps Headquarters’ grounds.”

“Where is she, then? If she’s on the grounds, then why haven’t any of us seen her?” Eren’s voice rises out of the mumbling, dangerously close to shouting. It’s a question they’d all been wondering, aside from the question as to why she’d left. Captain Levi’s eyes narrow at him, a motion to get him to quiet down. The look makes sweat run down Bertholdt’s neck.

As if he hadn’t heard, Commander Erwin continued to talk. “It has come to our attention that Mikasa Ackerman was withholding important information vital to the continuation of mankind and the defeat of the titans. She has expressed her unwillingness to provide such information, on the basis of it supposedly being dangerous information.” The mumbling grew louder. Bertholdt could feel his heart beat under his skin, but it felt as though it had stopped. They had definitely killed her. He had basically walked her to her execution.

Squad Leader Hange walked onto the scene, the smallest smile on her face. She tugged along Mikasa, who was bound in connected gauntlets, with some metal contraption set in between her teeth. Bertholdt lets out a long sigh of relief. The Commander continued to speak. “However, she _is_  willing to push us closer to such information, a little at a time.” He takes a deep breath, then exhales, slowly. “At this point in time, Mikasa Ackerman is now one of humanity’s greatest assets and will be kept in separate living spaces from the rest of you all for her own safety, with the exception of mealtimes. You may all be dismissed.”

Eren surged forward, what looked to be an accusation on the tip of his tongue, but Squad Leader Hange quickly took the floor once more. “Wait, wait, wait. One more second of your time, please!” She pulled Mikasa closer to her, and it looked like she rolled her eyes. “On the topic of Mikasa’s confinement- it’s as much for your safety as it is for hers.” Her eyes became slightly darker, the smile hesitant on her lips. “Mikasa Ackerman has revealed herself as the second titan shifter that is willing to help humanity, but has only recently come to realize this ability. Until we are certain that she is able to control herself, she’ll remain in the dungeon, her separate living space.... That’s all, you are now dismissed!” Commander Erwin shot her a sharp look.

No one seemed willing to move away from their position. They exchange looks, wide eyes and open mouths. Eren looks defeated and confused, his fingers knotted in his own hair, watching helplessly as they led Mikasa away once more. She wasn’t even able to turn back to look, as both Squad Leader Hange and Commander Erwin blocked her from behind. Reiner, returned to his right mind, guiltily stared at the side of Bertholdt’s head, as if he was the one that made Mikasa a titan shifter. Armin immediately sat down, breathing heavily.

Yet, what about Bertholdt?

It was as if every nerve in his brain short-circuited, his feet turned to lead and his head pumped full of gas. He couldn’t move, just blankly wear down the spot that she had been standing in with his eyes. One by one, the assembled squad moved away, but he didn’t move until Reiner pulled him away.

It’s hard to even trick himself into feeling alright.

This was his nightmare. If he could open his eyes and wake up and escape it all, he would. But he can’t. This is reality. Every horrible thing he’d ever imagined them doing to him if he were outed as a titan shifter immediately comes to mind, erasing and replacing himself with Mikasa.

They are relieved of training for today. Everyone sits on their beds, staring at one another.

No one says anything.

-

She doesn’t attend dinner that night, most likely because the emotional wounds left on her comrades are still fresh, but she is seated at Eren and Armin’s table the next morning at breakfast. Mikasa picks apart half of a fried egg with a spoon, her hands and jaw free when she pops a berry into her mouth. Bertholdt watches her from across the room, noting her lack of bacon and knife. Her two best friends watch her carefully, examining her for marks and trying to make idle chatter.

The rest of the cafeteria is silent, until she swallows, then speaks. “My experimentation begins this afternoon. I won’t be around for lunch or dinner.” When she moves to place her tray to be washed, Eren catches her elbow.

“Are we allowed to be there?” She pauses, then nods slightly. “We’ll... We’ll all come out and keep you safe, okay, Mikasa?”

She breathlessly laughs, just barely smiling. “Whatever you want, Eren.” She rubs the inside of her elbow, closing her eyes briefly. “See you later, then.”

Noon comes around too soon, and Eren and Armin leave the cabin to head toward Hange’s experimentation area. Wordlessly, Bertholdt and Reiner follow him until the grass changes to the packed dirt of the semi-arena. Simply enough, Mikasa sits in the center of the circle, her legs folded over one another, looking mildly bored. She plays with her thumbs, then presses her thumbs to the insides of her elbows.

Hange ushers them all to a “safe” distance, seated behind a table with the strange wooden box Bertholdt had seen her handle earlier. In it lay three vials, each about the size of his palm, all empty. “Mikasa says that she’s as tall as Eren’s titan, so we weren't sure that she could fit in the well but... Oh, this is so exciting!” Her eyes sparkling and wide, she manages to unnerve every single one of them in one sentence. “Ready, Mikasaaa?” She calls out ahead, her hands cupped over her mouth to amplify the sound. Mikasa nodded, giving her a thumbs up. To the rest of them, Hange explained the situation. “In the event that something goes wrong, Levi and myself will be able to cut her out. And, with Eren here, we have an extra safety measure.”

Mikasa raised the curve of her thumb to her lips, holding it there, but not moving. She was awaiting a second affirmation. At Hange’s insistent nodding (who, after doing so, made a quick note that titan shifters have superior eyesight), she cleaved her teeth through the flesh of her hand. Bertholdt shivers at the loud crunching sound, as if she were gnawing at her hand instead of just biting it.

The transformation is insanely quick, bursts of steam exploding from every direction. They all attempt to blink the tears out of their eyes, digging their heels in the dirt to keep from being blown away. When the smoke clears and they’re able to look about, Eren’s clinging to a support pillar, Armin had been knocked onto his back and Hange had ran ahead to embrace Mikasa’s titan, who sat in the same position as she had been. “Tw-twenty meters! She’s even taller than Eren!” Nuzzling her face into the titan’s thigh, Hange cast her gaze upward, where Mikasa’s head had bent down to look at her.

The resemblance to Eren was uncanny. Her skin was bronzed, her head resembling more of skull, with no lips and deeper eye sockets. The more he looked at her, however, the more he was able to spot the differences. Where Eren had been built in a masculine fashion, she resembled Annie’s body type more and, where her bare neck was intended to be, large crystalline spikes emerged, like a necklace or a collar. Her teeth were sharp at the edges, her eyes missing the white sclera and irises that he’d had, being just dark black sockets.

As if in response the Hange, the teeth parted and she let out a small ‘hnnn’ sound. Both Bertholdt and Reiner freeze, staring open-mouthed for different reasons. For Bertholdt it was because, well, when your lover turns out to be a really large, mildly attractive titan, what else can you do? For Reiner, it was a split between shock and fear, unconsciously sizing her up. This put a serious wrench in their plan for taking the Coordinate.

“That’s going to be a problem.” They’re all ripped from their reverie by Captain Levi’s voice, spoken through set lips. “That giant-ass collar... How is she going to get out?”

Oh.

They hadn’t thought about that.

Mikasa’s head pulls away from Hange, exhaling a small puff of steam before straightening her shoulders. A loud splitting sound resounds through the air, and they all freeze. Everyone’s hand goes to their blades, yet the titan body makes no move. Instead, the collar splits in the back, exposing the muscle and veins holding Mikasa’s human body within it. When he squints, Bertholdt can just barely make out her arms pushing herself out, the majority of the tendrils of viscera remaining attached to her forehead and hair. When she raises herself out of it, the titan body doesn’t immediately dissolve until she lowers herself slowly down its back, using the blades from her maneuver gear as dual pick-axes, easing her descent.

She lands on her feet, crouched, then stands. Her eyes scan over them, and Bertholdt doesn’t miss that her eyes linger on him. Turning to the captain, she nods to him. “I can take care of that, myself.”

Hange shrieks in theatrical agony as the body begins to dissolve, protesting to her dissolving new specimen.

 

 


	8. Actions Speak Louder than Words, but Noises Get the Point Across

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for canon-typical violence in this chapter!

Bertholdt makes it a daily thing, watching Hange’s experiments with Mikasa. Slowly, Eren had been integrated into the routine, as she led him through partial transformations. She’d adjust his posture, fix the set of his shoulders, as if she were a titan shifting master. She mostly sat through them, having her blood tested by Hange and making sure Eren’s experiments ran smoothly. She lounged about, like a mountain lion in the sun, looking slightly less than invested in what was going on.

It’s the fifth experiment of the month when she breaks the cycle of napping by the well. She touches the edge of Hange’s shoulder, barely more than a tapping motion. Her attention is immediately redirected to Mikasa, an excited smile on her face. She’s obviously expecting Mikasa’s commentary on Eren’s titan form, her eyebrows wagging at her like she’s expecting her to say something scandalous. “I want a knife.” This is obviously not the request she was expecting, because her moving eyebrows still, high on her forehead.

“Why do you want it-” Her smile falls, adopting a look of shock.

“I meant my knife.” Mikasa’s chest rises and falls in a heavy, tired sigh. The bags under her eyes had disappeared, most likely a side effect from her recent transformations, but she still seems tired. “Biting into my hand damages the nerves. It’d be easier to cut myself somewhere else.” It sets off warning bells in Bertholdt’s mind, partially wondering if they would actually allow her such a weapon.

They’d already taken away all meat from her diet, as well as what they deemed “sharp” cutlery (somehow, forks counted)- would they genuinely trust her with a knife? Hange ponders the question, her cheek cupped by her right hand. Even Captain Levi glances over, interested in how it would turn out. Her voice trills slightly on a ‘wellllll...’, weighing the pros and cons. It’s obvious that she’s loyal to the Survey Corps and has no drive to harm any of them. Were it all a front, Hange pondered, a blank, yet unnerving look coming to her eye, And she’s faking her loyalty, we have both Eren and Armin to persuade her otherwise.

With a carefree look that heavily contrasted her inner thoughts, Hange threw her hands to the side in a shrug. “I don’t see the problem with that.” Something in Mikasa’s eyes sparkled, light reflecting throughout her black irises. She had the tiniest smile on her face. Hange leads her away from the group, with Eren’s titan making vague protesting rumbles, hands twitching. Craning his neck around Reiner, Bertholdt can see the two of them head back to the headquarters, beginning to pursue them.

Reiner put up a mild protest, tugging on his arm for a solid half minute, but let him go, continuing to watch Captain Levi interact with Eren’s titan. For being a decent six foot tall titan- shifter, Bertholdt was decently good at sneaking about, as his mission required him to be. Yet, he swears he can see Mikasa’s ears twitch, even from his position seven feet behind them. He can’t hear what their saying, just the faint hum from the undercurrent of their words.

They stop at Hange’s office, closing and locking the door behind them. He looms outside the door, indecisive as to whether or not he should press his ear to the door. He can hear the squad leader’s voice rise up in a playful tone, and he jerked himself to the door, his ear at the wood supporting it. It would prevent his weight from making the door creak.

“-see why I have to tell you anything about me.” Mikasa’s voice is quiet and, even with his superior hearing, he has to strain himself to hear her. Her voice fades in and out, allowing him only to catch snippets. “You want.... About titan-shifters in general, right?”

A sound like the latches on a briefcase coming undone fills the quiet of the hall. The hinges creak loudly enough for Hange’s part of the conversation to be obscured. The sound makes his teeth hurt with its high pitch, and he sinks his teeth into his tongue, keeping himself from biting down. Mikasa’s voice is louder this time, and he has the strangest suspicion that she’s aware he’s listening. It sends a shiver down his spine- romantic etiquette usually deemed spying uncouth. “So, what you’re telling me is that-” She sighs loudly, and something metallic is dragged across wood. “You want me to tell everyone everything about myself and Eren as some kind of... Insurance?”

“Of course!” Wood protests, and he backtracks, realizing they’re moving toward the door. “If something were to happen to either of you, we would need as much information as possible.”

The doorknob turns and he jobs backwards, a heavy sweat coming over Bertholdt. His back slams into a corner and he struggles to make his way around it before Mikasa exits. He barely peeks around the corner, but she catches him, an amused smile pushing its way to the surface. Hange doesn’t notice where her attention was.

“You have Eren and I down for dual shifting tonight, right?” There’s no question in her voice, and he knows she’s saying it for his benefit. He’d never joined their later sessions, having to leave to get food or shower and coming back to find them finished. She turns her head away from him.

“Yes, but I don’t see what that has-”

“Most of it is easier to show that tell.” Her gait suddenly becomes wider, putting a lot of distance between her and Hange, who struggles to keep up. She’s putting more space between them, leaving him to make his escape. God, he loves her.

He hears Hange’s declarations of excitement before he sprints away, the cold sweat down his back feeling like a heavy sense of foreshadowing. He isn’t sure that he wants to go, but it’s a cross between his mission and his own personal sense of responsibility telling exactly why he should go. He constructed a list: 1) He’s courting her 2) She may say something about the Coordinate 3) She’s going to shift into a titan again 4) If he didn’t go, he’d be leaving her with Levi and Commander Erwin.

It’s an easier decision after that.

-

He eats dinner early, and with a gusto that puts Reiner to shame. He speeds through a shower, leaving himself half-soaked with his pajamas sticking to him. He brushes past Reiner, who headed to his own bed, exhausted from the daily training that had followed their excursion to the experimentation site. “Good night, Reiner.”

“Have fun with your giant girlfriend, Bertholdt.” Reiner lets out a yawn, the words mumbled and poking fun. Bertholdt had assumed that Mikasa’s titan-shifting would jolt something in his memory and eliminate the obnoxious dual personality of his, but it seemed it was all wishful thinking.

Rolling his eyes, he leaves Reiner and his snoring to the other boys, bumping past a zombie-like Armin. He rights the small boy, who stares up at him with unfocused eyes. "Sorry," He yawns again, "I haven't been to sleep for a while. I'm getting a little clumsy."

"It's fine, it's fine." The day Bertholdt complains about people running into him is the day he shrinks five inches.  He would ask him as to if he were okay or not, but the answer was obvious, so he gently sets his hands on Armin’s shoulders and turns him in the correct direction of the cabin. “Um... Sleep well!” He hopes his voice didn’t make him seems as though he were up to something, but Armin’s heavily-lidded eyes let him know that he was too tired interpret his voice even if he tried.

He watches his feet and his surroundings more carefully as he makes his way to the experimentation grounds, finding Mikasa already transformed and sitting peacefully to herself. Scanning the area, he can’t spot Eren, even with his enhanced vision. Mikasa’s nose twitches, and her dark irises turn to him. Though he, himself, is a titan shifter (and had forty meters on her), he still finds a surge of learned fear shot through him, remembering Berik behind his eyes. Instead of the growl or a roar of bloodlust that he’d been expecting, she lets out a very small cooing sound at him, the skin around her teeth seeming to twitch.

Hange appeared to be scanning a paper with crisp handwriting, and he makes his way to her, trying to read the paper. He caught the words “blood”, “injection”, and “Jaeger” before the squad leader turned the page just slightly, obscuring his gaze from it. A feeling to snatch the paper back rises in him, but he immediately quells it, surprised at the urge. It wasn’t like him to act like that to a leader. Perhaps it had something to do with the urgency written in the letters, or the fact that it obviously concerned Mikasa?

Putting a blank sheet of paper on top of the important page, thoroughly obscuring his view, Hange turned her attention to him in a brief nod, before refocusing on Mikasa’s titan. “Hey, Mikasa!” With a violent pointing motion, she gestured to Bertholdt, causing the titan’s eyes to shift, a huff of amusement escaping her lips in the form of steam. His chest swells, an unidentifiable emotion bordering on pride curling its way through his heart. The squad leader pushes him forward, causing his feet to stumble on flat ground. Before he can ask, she addresses Mikasa again. “He’s big enough for you to see, right?” She squints, the black sclera shadowed by her eyelids. She nods, just slightly, nostrils flaring. “Try to pick him up!”

The amused huff comes back and, with surprising speed from her usually relaxed titan, two of her clawed nails lift him by his 3DMG panel on his back. He dangles in midair for the briefest of seconds before her hand sweeps underneath him to cradle him. He’s frozen, staring into her dark eyes, searching them until he finds the slightest crescent of a gray-blue. A flush runs its way across his whole body in relation to her adamant stare. It was different than how she was able to look at him as a human, her eyes limited to small details due to her size.

As a titan, however, she could look at him as a whole, take him in bit by bit, and the knowledge made him a little more than uncomfortable in his lover’s hand. The cooing sound comes back, her teeth locking together. He’s slowly lifted to her head and, impressively gentle, she nudges him only slightly with her nose. Hange’s presence is in the back of his mind when he leans back to have the space to kiss the tip of her nose. In response, a rumble works its way out of her chest, her eyes closed peacefully.

He’s slightly ashamed of his less impressive rumble, limited by his human body  but it’s a baser feeling, a level he doesn’t often draw himself back to. Being a human was priority in the mission, but giving into instinct made him feel fuzzy from his head to his toes. Hugging her nose and feeling her hands cup around his body provided him with a sense of security, knowing that she’d shelter his small form. She rocks slightly, and he wonders if she’d fall asleep like this. It probably wouldn’t be the best thing, staying in the titan like that, but her nose twitches once more and she begins to bend at the waist, lowering him closer to the ground.

Across the arena, Eren raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. The way he moved about indicated an already bad day, made worse by some perceived transgression. Bertholdt definitely didn’t mistake the intentional shove he gave him, however, and definitely didn’t miss the burning glare he sent in his direction. The way he bit into his thumb also seemed to be a threat, and he couldn’t help the sweat sticking his shirt to his back. When his titan emerged, there was a brief pause in motion, as if the whole world had held its breath. Then his irises shrank- not just the pupil, the whole irise contracted in on itself- and his fist swung at Mikasa.

Bertholdt found himself rooted to the ground in horror- had his simple display of affection been enough to change the command Eren had thought when shifting? Thinking it to be just a playing fight, Hange raised her eyes only momentarily, then went back to her paperwork. When Eren’s jaw unhinged, advancing toward his counterpart, however, the situation became extremely tense. From her relaxed position, Hange immediately stood up, cursing and searching for the parts of her maneuver gear, having abandoned them for a more comfortable sitting position.

In his pajamas, Bertholdt was both defenseless and useless. Mikasa didn’t fight back, either, making it all the worse to watch. Eren’s titan had grasped her collarbone between its teeth, blood dripping in rivulets down her chest. His feet carried him before he even realized what he’d started to do, toeing some thin line between insanity and rational thought. He’d opened his own mouth, beginning to see red, the nerves in his hand detecting the pressure of teeth. Reiner had always been the impulsive one, the one needing to be held back, but, no, this was all him.

He thought nothing of being the Colossal Titan, just that his meadow was about to burn down, his attic and basement was going to be emptied out, a little cottage in the middle of the forest crushed before it was even built. He bit down, knowing all he needed was an arm, a mouth, a leg, something to use to crush or maul. At the same time, Mikasa’s jaw unclenched, her sharp teeth finding purchase in the back of the titan’s neck, her teeth being set large enough to dig into the areas around his body. She tore him away, the titan’s body slowing, the flesh he’d gnawed off falling from his mouth and the wounds healing on her body.

Bending once more at the waist, she set the searing cluster of skin down onto the ground with the same amount of care she’d used on Bertholdt. The muscle from his titan began to dissipate, leaving Eren’s small, exhausted body. Behind her, half-formed with green eyes straining about, the upper torso of the Colossal Titan scanned the area.

-

A loud, uncomfortable screeching sound filled his thoughts and Bertholdt slung out an arm to quiet it. His hand flopping about much like a dying fish, he found the plastic object he’d been blindly searching for. Grinding a fist into his eye to clear away the sleep, he looked around his room, the tendrils of a horrible nightmare still making him uneasy. His pajama top stuck to him as it always does, making him question why he even wore it, as he always does. Shirking it and tossing it to one of the many clothes piles littered about, he groaned and flipped onto his side.

His alarm clock read 6am. He’d forgotten that school had ended yesterday, and had accidentally set his clock once more. Turning it off and crashing back to his bed, he wrapped his arms around himself.

He digs his nose into the pillow, smelling dandelions and antibacterial soap and, strangely enough, feels loved.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: * Eren shifted with angry intent because he was sleep-deprived, and his mood worsened when he figured out that Bertholdt and Mikasa were together when he saw him kiss her nose- it was the betrayal that they hadn't told him that put him on edge, not their actual romance  
> * Yes, I am totally making the previous aus count as a dream sequence for the next one.   
> {END OF ARC 2}  
> I really needed to switch aus because the romance was being dulled down like crazy in favor of the plotline so, hoooo boy, here we go. I've been planning that ending for a week, I just didn't know how to lead up to it. Don't worry, it's not the end- just might be the end of the SNKverse, though.   
> In other news, I had forgotten that I set this universe as the default universe in my other story and, when I wrote another chapter for it the other day, I killed Bertholdt off in it and  
> It kinda messed me up because Mikasa didn't remember them being in love and just saw him as the Colossal Titan, so she killed him and he didn't fight her   
> In case you ever wondered how the first arc could've ended.   
> Please comment, it helps me get inspiration for the rest of the story.  
> {NEXT ARC: HIGHSCHOOL} (God bless AUs)


End file.
